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RICHARD  PARKS  BLAND. 


UAN  AMERICAN  COMMONER" 


THE  LIFE  AND  TIMES  OF 
RICHARD  PARKS  BLAND 


A  STUDY  OF  THE  LAST  QUARTER  OF  THE 
NINETEENTH  CENTURY 


WITH  AN  INTRODUCTION  BY  WILLIAM  JENNINGS  BEYAN  AND 
PERSONAL  REMINISCENCES  BY  MRS.  RICHARD  PARKS  BLAND 


WILLIAM  VINCENT  BYARS 

EDITOB 


;.   W.  STEPHEN'S,    I'UBLISHER 

COLUMBIA,  MISSOTJRI 

1000 


Copyright  1900,  by 

E.  W.  STEPHENS, 

Columbia,  Mo. 


Press  of 

E.  W.  STEPHENS, 
Columbia,  Mo. 


HON.  WILLIAM  JENNINGS  BRYAN. 


MR.  BRYAN'S  INTRODUCTION. 


ICHARD  P.  BLAND  combined,  in  a  rare  degree,  those  quali 
ties  which  are  essential  in  the  successful  public  servant.  He 
was,  in  fact,  an  ideal  representative  of  the  people.  He  was  hon 
est  with  himself  and  with  his  fellows;  he  was  industrious  and 
devoted  himself  conscientiously  to  his  work;  his  habits,  his  tastes  and  his 
ambitions  were  such  as  to  protect  him  from  the  temptations  which  hover 
about  those  who  are  conspicuous  in  public  life;  he  had  convictions  deep 
and  controlling;  his  ideas  were  high  and  pure;  he  had  the  ability  to  pre 
sent  and  defend  his  views  with  clearness  and  force — his  eloquence  being 
the  eloquence  of  one  who  knew  what  he  was  talking  about  and  meant 
what  he  said ;  and  he  had  the  courage  to  express  his  opinion  and  stand  by 
it,  regardless  of  the  consequences  which  might  follow  to  himself. 

Measuring  all  questions  by  the  fundamental  principles  which  underlie 
our  government,  his  career  was  remarkably  free  from  the  inconsistencies 
which  have  so  often  marred  the  lives  of  great  men.  He  was  reared 
among  the  plain  people  and  was  their  faithful  friend  and  champion;  he 
never  partook  of  the  lotus  fruit  which  makes  the  recipient  of  a  public 
trust  forgetful  of  those  who  confer  it. 

He  was  democratic  in  the  broadest  sense  of  the  term ;  he  had  implicit 
confidence  in  the  capacity  of  the  people  for  self  government  and  an  abiding 
faith  that  they  would,  in  the  end,  solve  aright  every  social  and  political 
problem. 

He  was  a  pioneer  in  the  great  struggle  for  the  restoration  of  bimetal 
lism  and  for  two  decades  led  the  silver  fight  in  the  House  of  Representa 
tives.  That  he  was  correct  in  the  position  he  took  on  the  money  question 
is  evident  from  the  fact  that  for  twenty  years  after  he  gave  his  name  to 

iii 


iv  MR.  BRYAN'S  INTRODUCTION. 

the  coinage  law  of  i878  all  political  parties  in  the  United  States  continued 
to  promise  the  restoration  of  bimetallism,  differing  only  as  to  the  means 
of  securing  the  desired  result;  and  when  the  gold  standard  was  openly 
espoused  by  the  republican  party,  it  was  defended,  not  upon  the  ground 
that  the  original  demonetization  of  silver  was  wise,  but  upon  the  ground 
that  new  conditions  had  arisen. 

Mr.  Bland  was  with  his  party  on  every  public  question  and  was 
prominent  in  the  fight  within  the  party  which  resulted  in  the  adoption  of 
the  Chicago  platform.  If  the  nomination  had  been  given  merely  as  a 
reward  for  public  service  he  would  have  had  no  competitor  for  the  honor. 
Whether  his  nomination  would  have  brought  victory  to  the  party  in  1896 
is  a  question  which  can  not  now  be  determined,  but  certain  it  is  that  no 
aspirant  for  a  public  office  ever  manifested  less  disappointment  over  the 
result  or  gave  to  his  successful  rival  more  earnest  and  sincere  support. 

Mr.  Eland's  life  was  a  success.  He  did  not  amass  a  fortune.  But 
he  measures  life  by  a  low  standard  who  estimates  success  by  the  dollars 
either  received  or  saved.  Many,  without  possessing  real  merit,  have 
secured  great  wealth  by  inheritance  or  by  accident ;  while  many  have  saved 
by  dwarfing  themselves,  stinting  those  dependent  upon  them,  and  with 
holding  from  society  that  contribution  which  is  due  from  the  more 
favored  to  the  less  fortunate. 

He  left  his  impress  upon  the  age  in  which  he  lived  and  gave  back 
to  society  full  compensation  for  all  the  honors  he  received.  To  the  mem 
bers  of  his  party  his  life  was  an  inspiration;  to  his  immediate  family  it  is 
an  inheritance  more  valuable  and  more  permanent  than  lands  or  bonds. 

"A  good  name  is  rather  to  be  chosen  than  great  riches;  and  loving 
favor  rather  than  silver  and  gold." 

WM.  J.  BRYAN. 


EDITOR'S  PREFACE. 


1872,  when  Mr.  Bland  entered  politics,  and  1899, 
when  he  made  his  last  speech  in  Congress,  a  revolution  had 
taken  place  in  American  politics  as  great  as  that  which  fol 
lowed  the  candidacy  of  Andrew  Jackson  as  the  first  representa 
tive  of  the  states  west  of  the  Alleghenies.  To  force  this  revolution  Mr. 
Bland  contributed,  no  doubt,  more  than  any  other  single  man  in  the  public 
life  of  his  generation.  As  a  result  of  it  the  Civil  War  combination  in  politics, 
under  which  the  control  of  the  country  frequently  depended  on  buying 
enough  "floaters"  to  constitute  the  balance  of  power  in  a  few  city  wards 
in  one  or  two  "pivotal  states,"  was  broken  forever  ;  Civil  War  sectionalism 
ceased  to  be  the  decisive  factor  in  national  elections;  the  Northwestern 
states  which  had  been  admitted  to  assure  the  continued  supremacy  of  the 
Republican  party,  turned  upon  it  and  defeated  it,  and  the  narrow  issues  of 
local  and  sectional  animosity  were  superseded  by  issues  of  enduring  and 
fundamental  principles,  involving  the  progress  of  the  United  States  as  a 
whole  and  of  the  world  at  large. 

No  history  of  this  movement  has  been  written.  Its  results  have 
scarcely  been  suggested  and  its  ultimate  meaning  has  hardly  been  sus 
pected.  Mr.  Bland,  who  most  fully  represented  the  forces  which  are 
still  at  work  to  complete  —  perhaps  in  wholly  unexpected  ways  —  a  work 
which  seems  to  have  reached  its  first  great  climax  in  his  lifetime,  has 
been  looked  upon  by  some  as  a  mere  specialist  and  by  others  as  a  narrow 

sectionalist  and  partisan.     The  object  of  this  book  is  to  study  and  make 

> 

more  generally  intelligible  the  great  forces  he  represented  —  by  virtue  of 
which,  without  attempting  to  grasp  power,  he  made  the  ballots  which 
elected  him  to  represent  an  agricultural  district  in  Missouri,  more  formid- 


vi  EDITOR'S  PREFACE. 

able  to  European  and  other  opponents  of  republican  institutions  than  the 
whole  military  power  of  North  America  could  have  been  made  in  the  past 
or  than  it  is  ever  likely  to  be  made  in  the  future. 

No  one  man  and  no  combination  of  men,  however  great  in  states 
manship,  could  have  produced  the  revolution  in  the  West  which  showed 
itself  first  in  what  was  called  derisively  the  "Rainbow-Chasing  Move 
ment"  to  change  the  political  attitude  which  Illinois,  Wisconsin,  Nebraska, 
Iowa,  Kansas,  and  other  northwestern  states  had  occupied  since  the  Civil 
War.  It  is  only  through  the  slow  processes  of  evolution  that  such  great 
changes  come.  It  is  a  fact,  however,  that  the  possibility  and  immanency 
of  this  change  became  apparent  in  advance  to  a  few  men  who  worked  with 
Mr.  Bland  to  force  it,  expecting  that  its  final  result  would  necessarily  be 
a  division  of  the  "Solid  South"  as  well  as  of  the  "Solid  West,"  and  hence 
a  complete  re-alignment  of  both  parties.  Whatever  charges  prejudice 
may  prefer  against  men  who  are  governed  in  politics  by  such  motives, 
that  of  being  "narrow  partisans,"  "sectionalists"  or  "mere  specialists"  will 
not  be  entertained  against  them  at  the  bar  of  history. 

Taking  Mr.  Bland  as  the  strongest  and  most  effective  representative 
among  public  men  of  the  great  forces,  compelling  the  world-wide  move 
ment  in  which  the  United  States  are  a  factor  at  the  opening  of  the  twen 
tieth  century,  it  is  the  duty  of  every  American  to  understand  him  and  the 
popular  impulses  back  of  him. 

Especially  is  it  the  duty  of  his  opponents,  for  if  in  their  advocacy 
of  their  own  political  and  economic  ideas  they  misunderstand  and 
underestimate  his  meaning,  it  will  be  at  their  own  risk.  All  the  forces  of 
steam  and  electricity  which  made  the  vast  region  west  of  the  Mississippi 
a  factor  in  the  civilization  of  the  world,  were  factors  in  the  work  to  which 
Mr.  Bland  devoted  himself  as  the  representative  of  the  rights  and  of  the 
power  of  the  "direct  producer."  When  in  the  United  States,  the  party 
of  "property  rights"  and  that  of  "manhood  rights"  are  opposed  with  no  more 


EDITOR'S    PREFACE.  Vli 

evidence  of  mere  sectionalism  than  appeared  in  the  struggle  between 
Henry  Clay  of  Kentucky  and  Andrew  Jackson  of  Tennessee  as  party 
leaders,  it  will  be  understood  by  those  who  take  the  trouble  to  understand 
politics  at  all,  that  this  was  the  consummation  of  Mr.  Eland's  life  work  and 
the  necessary  result  of  his  economic  principles. 

To  study  the  conditions  under  which  he  worked,  the  forces  he  rep 
resented,  the  people  for  whom  he  strove,  the  struggle  for  mastery  be 
tween  class  and  class,  the  slow  development  of  the  high  purposes,  by  which 
individual  purposes,  if  they  be  antagonistic  to  progress,  are  overruled — 
this  and  not  eulogy  or  mere  partisanship  is  the  governing  motive  of  the 
present  volume.  Mr.  Bland  will  speak  for  himself  in  his  public  speeches 
and  in  the  history  of  his  connection  with  coinage  legislation  prepared  by 
himself  and  found  among  his  papers.  The  material  for  the  study  of  his 
private  life  has  been  contributed  chiefly  by  his  widow,  Mrs.  Virginia  E. 
Bland,  and  by  his  intimate  friends  and  associates,  but  I  wish  to  express 
my  obligation  to  public  men  in  all  parties  who  have  responded  to  my  re 
quest  for  reminiscences  of  his  connection  with  the  great  events  in  which 
some  of  them  were  his  opponents.  I  hoped  in  undertaking  the  work  of 
preparing  this  volume  to  make  such  a  study  of  the  governing  realities  of 
the  history  of  the  last  quarter  of  the  nineteenth  century  as  might  be  valu 
able  to  students  of  public  affairs  for  at  least  the  first  quarter  of  the 
twentieth.  If  this  were  too  bold  a  hope  for  any  one  working  under  my 
limitations,  I  can  feel  at  least  that  the  idea  itself  has  in  it  too  much  inher 
ent  worth  to  be  discredited  by  even  the  most  inadequate  attempt  to  realize 
its  possibilities. 

W.  V.  B. 


TABLE  OF  CONTENTS 


CHAPTER  I. 

Western  Leadership  in  the  First  and  Last  Quarters  of  the  Nineteenth  Century.— 
The  Flux  and  Reflux  of  Civilization.— The  Individualism  of  the  Plain  American 
and  the  Spirit  of  Progress. — Culture  and  Degeneracy  in  Reactionary  or  Station 
ary  Communities.— The  Impulses  of  Progress  as  they  Operate  Through  Repre 
sentative  Men  Upward  from  the  Undegenerate  Mass. — Western  Conditions  and 
Impulses  as  Benton  Represented  Them.— European  Atavism  and  Degeneracy  in 
the  Seventeenth  and  Eighteenth  Centuries.— Jackson  and  Benton  as  Factors 
in  Political  Revolution  and  Advance. — Sensual  Neurosis  and  Political  Con 
vulsion. — The  Moral  Advance  Represented  by  the  Individual  Character  and  Life 
of  Bland. 


CHAPTER  II. 

"There  is  the  East — there  is  India." — Benton's  Prevision  of  the  Results  of  Opening 
the  Trans-Mississippi  West. — Benton  and  Bland  as  Vehicles  of  World-Moving 
Ideas. — The  Constructive  Impulses  of  the  People  Greater  than  the  Destructive 
forces  of  Civil  War. — Bland  as  a  representative  of  the  Meaning  of  the  Last 
Quarter  of  the  Nineteenth  Century. — Western  America  and  Europe. — American 
Plowmen  and  American  Railroads  against  Malthus. — The  Nineteenth  Century 
and  the  Future. — Bland  as  a  Transmitter  of  Popular  Impulses.— The  Feudalism 
of  Land  and  of  Corporations. — The  New  England  Village  and  The  Virginia  Es 
tate  in  Sociology. 


CHAPTER  III. 

The  Aristocracy  of  Land  and  the  Oligarchy  of  Trade  Against  the  Liberty  and  De 
velopment  of  the  Individual.— John  Randolph  on  Manhood  Suffrage.— The 
American  Ideal  of  Decentralization. — Its  Precedents  in  Athens,  Venice  and  in 
England  under  Elizabeth.— New  England  and  Virginia  of  the  Eighteenth  Cen 
tury.— Government  Under  the  Highest  Possible  Civilization.— Government  for 
the  Control  of  the  Producer  by  Distributers  or  Non-Producers. — Its  Operations 
During  a  Century  of  American  Politics.— The  Tu  Quoque  Struggle  Between 
Holders  of  Corporation  Privilege  and  Agricultural  Producers  Using  Slave 
Labor.— From  Benton  and  Jackson  to  General  Benjamin  F.  Butler.— Diversion 
and  Change  of  Subject  in  Politics. 

viii 


TABLE  OF  CONTENTS.  ix 

CHAPTER  IV. 

Moral  Insanity  and  Intellectual  Disturbance  on  the  Battle  Field  and  in  Politics. — 
The  Spirit  of  Civilization  and  the  Theory  that  Trade  is  War.— The  American 
Idea  of  the  Last  Quarter  of  the  Eighteenth  Century  as  it  Inspired  Europe  in 
1848.  The  Rally  of  Toryism  and  the  Coup  d'Etat.— The  Crimean  War  and  the 
Growth  of  Reaction — D'Israeli  and  the  Dealers  in  War  Debts. — Growth  of  Im 
perialism  From  the  Coup  d'Etat  to  the  End  of  the  Century. — Hedonism  of  the 
Militant  and  Speculative  Classes. — Eland's  Higher  Education. 


CHAPTER  V. 

Expansion  and  Imperialism  under  the  First  Grant  Administration.— A  Strong  Gov 
ernment  with  Imperial  Power  to  Annex  and  Govern  Weaker  Peoples  Proposed 
for  the  United  States  by  International  Financiers. — Their  Objective  Point  the 
Perpetuation  and  Increase  of  the  War  Debt  and  the  Control  of  a  Currency  of 
Corporation  Paper  Based  On  It. — The  Moral  and  Intellectual  Habits  of  General 
Grant. — Weaknesses  Which  He  Struggled  to  Master. — His  Heroism  at  Mount 
MacGregor  Not  Developed  by  the  Politics  of  His  Administration. — General 
Taylor  on  the  Depraved  Morals  Created  by  Civil  War. — The  Constitution  as  a 
Bit  of  Old  Parchment. — Abandoned  Men  and  Lost  Women  as  Factors  in  Gov 
ernment. — General  Benjamin  F.  Butler  as  a  Representative  of  the  Power  to 
Control  Men  Through  Their  Own  Evil.— Worship  of  the  "Anglo-Saxon  Race" 
as  a  Moloch. — The  Inferno  of  Which  the  First  Expansion  Movement  was  a 
Symptom. — The  Demonetization  of  Silver  Effected  as  a  Result  of  It. 


CHAPTER  VI. 

The  Gold  Conspiracy  and  Black  Friday. — Banker  Henry  Clews  Describes  the  Means 
Used  to  Control  General  Grant. — Champagne  and  a  Pleasure  Party. — The  Treas 
ury  as  a  Factor  in  Speculation. — The  Rothschilds  in  American  Politics. — The 
Belmonts  as  their  Agents  and  Representatives. — Capitalizing  a  Revolution. — The 
Isthmian  Canal  Speculation  Under  Grant  and  its  Connection  with  Coercive 
Expansion. — The  Imperialistic  Plot  Against  Puerto  Rico,  San  Domingo  and 
Cuba. — Orville  Babcock  as  an  Envoy  Extraordinary. — History  Which  Repeated 
Itself  Under  the  McKinley  Administration. — The  Liberty  of  the  Innocent 
Against  the  Safety  of  the  Guilty. — The  Governing  Motive  of  Civilization. — 
Blaine  on  Civil  Rights. — Plutocracy  as  an  Insanity. — The  Law  of  Perfect  Lib 
erty. — Thurman,  Bland,  Greeley  and  Sumner. — Government  by  Garrison. — Lord 
Kitchener  and  His  College  at  Khartoum. — The  Civilization  of  Southern  Negroes 
and  the  Anglo-Saxonism  of  Fraudulent  Bondholders. — International  Plutocracy 
and  Murder  as  a  Fine  Art. 


X  TABLE  OF  CONTENTS. 

CHAPTER  VII. 

Thurman  and  Sumner  Against  "The  Man  on  Horseback."  The  Attempt  to  Align 
the  South  for  Imperialism  Fails. — The  Ideas  Represented  by  Greeley  and  Bland 
Against  the  Forces  Behind  Grant  and  Longstreet.— The  Work  of  Thurman  and 
Black  in  Checking  Imperial  Centralization  of  Power  Prepares  the  way  for  Bland. 
— The  Liberal  Republican  and  Democratic  Fusion  Movement  of  1872  Against 
Militarism  Draws  Bland  into  Politics. — How  he  came  to  be  Nominated  for  Con 
gress. — The  Influence  of  a  Missouri  Fence  Corner  in  Shaping  the  Course  of 
International  Politics. 


CHAPTER  VIII. 

The  Superiority  of  "Business"  to  Party. — Plutocratic  Attempts  to  Provide  Issues 
for  Both  Parties.— The  Object  of  "Expansion"  Under  Grant  Accomplished  in 
the  Demonetization  of  Silver  and  the  Control  of  the  Currency. — Sumner  De 
nounces  Imperialism  and  Forces  an  Open  Debate  on  the  Annexation  of  the 
West  Indies. — "A  Dance  of  Blood"  Proposed  by  the  Speculative  and  Non-Pro- 
ductive  Classes. — How  History  Repeated  Itself  in  1898. — General  Grant's  Argu 
ments  for  Imperialism  Used  Against  Bland  by  Imperialists  in  Missouri. — Thur 
man' s  Speech  Against  "Expansion." 


CHAPTER   IX. 

The  Republican  Party  Revolutionized  under  Grant. — Sumner  is  Driven  out  of  it. — 
Seward,  Greeley  and  Sumner  Die  Heart-Broken. — Elaine's  Tribute  to  Sumner. — 
The  use  of  Subconscious  Memory  in  Politics. — Militant  Commercialism  Called 
to  Account  for  the  Fall  of  Seward,  Sumner  and  Greeley. 


CHAPTER  X. 

The  Issue  and  Control  of  the  Currency  a  Vital  Prerogative  of  Sovereignty. — Benton 
Fails  to  Secure  a  Direct  Issue  with  the  Non-Productive  Classes. — Abuses  of  the 
Control  of  the  Currency  by  State  Banks  Flagrant. — Bland  Renews  Benton's 
Interrupted  Work  Against  Corporation  Sovereignty  in  the  Issue  of  the  Cur 
rency.— The  Party  of  Commercial  Imperialism  in  the  United  States  and  the 
Policies  of  Warren  Hastings.— The  Threat  of  the  Fusillade  as  a  Factor  In 
Economic  Discussion.— "Bluffing"  as  a  Political  Method  in  America.— States 
manship  and  the  Poker  Habit.— The  Realities  of  Hate  and  Passion  Behind  the 
Theatrical  Threats  of  Professional  Politicians.— Stirring  the  South  to  Resist 
ance.— Bland  and  Alexander  H.  Stephens  Consult  on  Means  of  Preventing  an 
Outbreak.— Butler's  Attack  Answered  at  the  South  by  Deep  Disturbance.— Im- 


TABLE    OF    CONTENTS. 


morality  in  all  Parties  and  in  all  Sections.—  The  Radicalism  of  Demagogues 
in  the  Black  Belt.  —  International  Commercialism  and  the  Trade  for  the  Con 
trol  of  the  American  Treasury.  —  Bland  on  Cox  and  Randall. 


CHAPTER  XI. 

Mr.  Bland  Describes  the  Struggle  of  the  Democratic  Minority  Against  the  Force 
Bill  and  the  Civil  Rights  Bill.— The  Roll  Call  on  a  Motion  to  Adjourn  as  the 
Last  Resort  of  Constitutional  Government. — The  Fight  of  1875  in  Congress  to 
Control  the  Presidential  Election  of  1876.— The  Scott  Subsidy  and  the  Attempt 
to  Control  Distribution  through  an  Increase  of  Tariff  Taxation.— The  Senate 
allows  the  Force  Bill  to  Fail. 


CHAPTER  XII. 

Mr.  Bland  Reviews  his  Own  Connection  with  the  Struggle  for  American  Popular 
Control  of  American  Mints  and  the  American  Treasury. — Currency  Legislation 
from  the  Demonetization  Act  of  1873  to  the  Bankers'  Panic  and  the  Renewed 
Struggle  for  Demonetization  in  the  Last  Decade  of  the  Century. — How  "the 
Crime  of  1873"  was  Perpetrated. — Mr.  Bland  Appointed  to  the  Committee  on 
Mines  and  Mining.— The  Banks  Bill  and  the  First  Sixteen-to-One  Free  Coinage 
Bill. — The  Silver  Commission  of  the  Forty-Fourth  Congress. — The  Bland  Free 
Coinage  Bill  and  the  Allison  Amendment. — The  Hayes  Veto  and  the  Votes  of 
Messrs.  McKinley,  Carlisle  and  Others  to  pass  the  Bill  over  it. — The  Demand  of 
the  Bondholders  for  the  Privilege  of  Issuing  and  Controlling  the  Currency. — 
The  London  Bankers  and  their  New  York  and  Western  Agents  Raid  the  Treas 
ury,  Contract  Credits  and  Compel  Panic  as  a  means  of  Securing  a  Currency  of 
Corporation  Notes  for  the  Public  and  the  Payment  of  their  own  Bonds  in  Gold. 
— England  Demonetizes  Silver  in  India  to  aid  Them. — At  the  Parting  of  the 
Ways  with  Wall  Street. — Mr.  Bland  Forces  the  Issues  Which  Compelled  the 
Chicago  Platform  and  the  Campaign  of  1896. — He  Points  out  the  only  Possible 
Course  for  the  Democratic  Party  in  the  Future. 


CHAPTER  XIII. 

The  "Whirling  Dervish  of  the  Market"  as  a  Factor  in  Public  Affairs. — Henry  Dem- 
arest  Lloyd  and  Richard  Brinsley  Sheridan  on  the  Speculative  Use  of  the  Co 
ercive  Power  of  Government. — '  'The  Meanness  of  the  Pedlar  and  the  Profligacy  of 
the  Pirate."— Trade  as  War.— Commercial  Use  of  the  War-Making,  Debt-Making 
and  Tax-Levying  Power  of  the  People. — Can  Selfishness  be  "Enlightened?" — 
The  Question  of  Forcing  Unselfishness  by  Law. — Socialism  or  Coerced  Co-op 
eration. — Bland  as  a  Representative  of  Free  Co-operation  and  Unrestricted  De 
velopment. — Increasing  Honesty  and  Liberality  in  Trade. — "Laissez  Faire"  as  a 


Xli  TABLE  OF  CONTENTS. 

Policy  of  Unsurrendering  Resistance  to  Restriction,  Obstruction  and  Oppression. 
— The  Foundation  Principle  of  all  True  Political  and  Social  Economy  the  Ob 
servance  of  the  Right  of  Individual  Growth  and  of  Fuller  Expansion  for  the  Con 
structive  Powers  of  Common  Humanity. — Liberty  Impossible  for  the  Unjust. 


CHAPTER  XIV. 

Speculative  Plutocracy  from  1873  to  1893. — The  "Whirling  Dervish"  as  a  Promoter 
of  Panics. — The  Gold  Corner  and  "Black  Friday"  Panic  Under  Grant  not  an 
Isolated  Incident. — Emotional  Insanity  as  a  Result  of  Moral  Disturbance  Due  to 
the  Speculative  Habit.— Beginning  of  Trusts  Under  Grant.— The  Standard  Oil 
Trust. — Conservatism  in  Administration  Under  Hayes  no  Check  to  the  Growth 
of  Plutocracy.— The  Attempt  to  Regulate  the  "Commune  of  Capital."— Use  of 
the  Law-Making  Power  by  "Practical"  Politicians  to  Blackmail  Law-Breaking 
Corporations. — The  Land  Grabbing  Spirit  in  its  Relations  to  Speculative 
Monopoly. 


CHAPTER  XV. 

The  Fundamental  Principle  of  Plutocracy  Manifested  in  Debt  Inflation  Accom 
panied  by  a  Demand  for  a  Contraction  of  the  Supply  of  Cash  Issued  by  Govern 
ment. — Mr.  Eland's  Consistency. — Debt  Inflation  Described  by  Henry  Clews. — 
Speculative  Banks  as  Holders  of  Inflated  Stocks  and  Bonds. — The  Character  of 
Fiske  as  Described  by  William  Walter  Phelps. — The  Imperialistic  Movement 
and  the  Demonetization  of  Silver  in  1900  a  Part  of  the  Logic  of  What  Fiske 
Represented. 


CHAPTER  XVI. 

Superiority  of  Plutocracy  to  Party  Illustrated  by  Mr.  Jay  Gould.— He  Demonstrates 
His  "Soundness"  by  Opening  His  Safe.— Influence  of  New  York  Safe  Deposit 
Vaults  in  Missouri  Politics.— The  Growth  of  Corporate  Inflation  Accompanied 
by  an  Increase  of  Irresponsibility  in  Politics.— Banks,  Railroads  and  Boards  of 
Trade  as  Necessary  Agencies  of  Civilization.— Production  and  Distribution  the 
Legitimate  Ends  of  all  Business  Activity.— Result  of  the  Speculative  Spirit 
in  Missouri  Politics.— The  Attempt  of  Gambling  and  Railroad  Rings  to  get 
Something  for  Nothing.  Regulation  of  Railroad  Rates  Accompanied  by  a  Com 
plete  Absence  of  Regulation  for  the  Power  to  Issue  Stocks  and  Bonds  Against 
the  Credit  of  General  Business.— Rings  and  the  Ruthlessness  of  Speculative 
Politics.— Abuse  of  the  Courts  Against  the  People. 


TABLE    OF    CONTENTS.  Xlli 

CHAPTER  XVII. 

The  Democratic  Party  in  Missouri  as  Bland  Represented  it.— The  Idea  Which  Has 
Given  it  Coherence  and  Efficiency. — The  Only  Motive  Which  Can  Justify  Men 
of  Higher  Intelligence  in  Taking  Part  in  Politics. — Bland  and  the  Courage  of 
Leadership.— Frank  P.  Blair  and  His  Pistols.— Eland's  Steadfast  Patience.— The 
Supreme  Test  of  Fitness  for  Success. — Bland  as  the  Type  of  the  Highest  Possi 
bilities  of  Missouri  Character. — The  Military  Idea  in  Missouri  Politics. — Growth 
of  Plutocratic  Combinations. — Bland  and  the  Transmississippi  West  Overthrow 
Malthusianism. — The  Struggle  for  the  Largest  Possible  Production  and  the 
Freest  Possible  Distribution. — Attempts  of  the  Speculative  Element  to  Control 
in  Missouri. — Marmaduke's  Epoch-making  Stand  for  Principle. 


CHAPTER  XVIII. 

"Who  Owns  the  West?"— The  Beginnings  of  a  Great  Political  Revolution.— Western 
Mortgages  and  the  "Bloody  Shirt." — How  Hon.  John  James  Ingalls  Retired 
From  Public  Life. — A  Ten  Dollar  Fac-Simile  and  its  Far-Reaching  Sequences. 
— The  Law  of  Maximum  Production  Against  Oligarchic  Restriction. — The  Work 
of  D.  M.  Grissom  in  Journalism  Complementing  that  of  Mr.  Bland  in  Congress. 
— Non-Resident  Ownership  of  Productive  Bases. — The  Centralization  of  Values 
and  the  Demand  of  Non-Residents  for  Political  Control. 


CHAPTER  XIX. 

The  Balance  of  Power  in  the  Electoral  College  Passes  to  the  Northwest. — Modifica 
tions  of  the  Sectional  Issue  Which  Had  Been  Forced  by  the  Mexican  Conquest. 
—Robert  Toombs  on  the  Domestic  Consequences  of  Aggression  Abroad.— The 
Sword  as  a  Title  to  Territory. — Toombs  and  Stephens  of  Georgia  Isolated  Under 
Folk's  Administration  in  their  Attempt  to  Prevent  Civil  War.— Their  Opposi 
tion  to  the  Treaty  of  Guadaloupe  Hidalgo.— Toombs  Accepts  War  as  an 
Inevitable  Result  of  the  Annexation  of  Mexican  Territory  and  Becomes  a 
Radical  Secessionist  in  1850.— The  South  Changes  Front  in  1889  and  Abandons 
the  Struggle  for  Sectional  Equality  in  the  Electoral  College. — President 
Cleveland's  First  Administration  as  it  Provoked  Political  Revolution. — "Ex 
pansion,"  the  Nicaragua  Canal,  the  Annexation  of  the  West  Indies,  and  the 
Nullification  of  the  Constitution  as  Discussed  by  Mr.  E.  V.  Smalley  in  1880. 
—Effect  of  the  Civil  War  on  Constitutional  Interpretation.— The  Republican 
Reaction  Against  Grant.— Mr.  Cleveland  as  a  Representative  of  the  "Better 
Element." 


TABLE    OF    CONTENTS. 


CHAPTER  XX. 

The  Fundamental  Reality  of  American  Politics. — International  Combinations  of 
Corporations  and  Maximum  Coercion  in  America.— The  Demand  for  Bonds  as 
a  Means  of  Endowing  Families,  Suspending  the  Natural  Laws  of  Redistribu 
tion  and  Creating  Hereditary  Oligarchy.— Restraint  of  Trade  by  Tariff  Laws  not 
Earnestly  Opposed  Under  the  First  Cleveland  Administration. — No  Vital  Reform 
of  Any  Kind  Possible  While  the  Electoral  College  Represented  Civil  War  Sec 
tionalism. — President  Harrison  as  a  More  Extreme  Federalist  than  Mr.  Cleve 
land. — His  Mistake  of  Judgment  in  Proposing  New  Measures  of  Coercion 
Against  Southern  Planters  WThile  Western  Farmers  Were  Using  Unmarketable 
Breadstuffs  for  Fuel.— ''Cheap  Money,"  Dear  Collateral,  and  Wasted  Wealth.— 
Speculation  in  Money  at  the  Expense  of  Agricultural  Exports. — Enormous 
Interest  Rates  on  Call  Loans  During  the  "Crop  Moving  Season." — The 
"Calamity  Howl,"  Its  Causes  and  Its  Results. 


CHAPTER  XXL 

"The  Rainbow  Chasing  Movement"  Begins. — Its  Object  the  Restoration  of  Con 
stitutional  Government  Based  on  the  Principles  of  1788. — "Winning  Without 
New  York,"  an  Incident  of  It.— Mr.  Cleveland's  Whig  Policies  Revive  the 
"Fierce  Democracy"  of  the  Jackson  Epoch. — Revolt  Against  Wade  Hampton 
in  South  Carolina  and  Ingalls  in  Kansas. — The  Northwest  as  the  Hope  of 
America  Against  "Floaters  in  Blocks  of  Five." — Illinois  as  a  Keystone  State. — 
The  Surrender  of  the  Presidency  to  New  York  the  Only  means  of  Breaking  the 
New  York  and  Indiana  Combination. — "The  Coat  and  the  Cloak"  Both  Given 
up  Successfully  In  Practical  Politics. — Results  of  Forcing  Issues  for  Principle. — 
Henry  George  and  His  Supporters  Reinforce  Mr.  Bland  on  the  "Farm  Mortgage 
Census."— The  Issue  in  Illinois.— "Rainbow  Chasers"  Not  Prejudiced  Against 
Mr.  Cleveland  or  New  York. 


CHAPTER  XXII. 

Mr.  Cleveland's  Second  Term.— His  Attempt  to  "Restore  the  Hegemony  of  New 
York"  Forces  His  Party  to  Repudiate  Him.— He  Defeats  Tariff  Reform  by 
Supplanting  it  With  a  Manufactured  Issue  Against  Bimetallic  Coinage.— Mr. 
Cleveland's  Thoroughgoing  Whiggery  and  His  Dislike  of  the  Vulgus.— He 
Attempts  to  Isolate  Mr.  Bland  in  Missouri.— How  a  National  Combination  Was 
Broken  by  the  Assault  of  a  Single  Newspaper.— Mr.  Bland  Boomed  for  Presi 
dent  in  Missouri.— Mr.  Cleveland's  Missouri  Supporters  in  Congress  Driven  to 
Cover.— Bland  Defeats  the  Gates  Bankruptcy  Bill.— The  Real  Meaning  of 
"Tariff  Reform"  as  Mr.  Cleveland  Represented  It.— He  and  His  Friends 


TABLE    OF    CONTENTS.  XV 

Dictate  the  Protectionist  Plank  in  the  Report  of  the  Platform  Committee  at 
Chicago  in  1892.— It  is  Rejected  by  the  Convention.— The  Standard  Oil  Com 
pany,  the  Sugar  Trust  and  the  Banks  as  a  Political  Combination. — Federalism 
and  the  Illinois  Strike. 


CHAPTER  XXIII. 

The  Financial  Policies  of  Plutocracy  and  John  Law  as  Their  Prophet. — Turgot  and 
Quesnay  as  Representatives  of  Sanity  and  the  Principles  of  Progress. — Mr. 
Eland's  Work  Justified  by  the  Strictest  Standard  of  Turgot.— "Hands  Off!  Let 
the  World  Move!" — The  Bankers'  Panic  and  Its  Causes. — The  Tendency  to 
Maximum  Production  as  a  Law  of  Nature  and  the  Fact  of  Minimum  Distribu 
tion  as  a  Result  of  Plutocratic  Oligarchy.— Political  Economy  in  Its  Last 
Analysis. — Ve-st  on  the  Sherman  Anti-Trust  Law  as  Humbug. — "Frying  Out 
the  Fat"  of  Lawbreaking  Combinations. — Trusts  in  no  Danger  From  the 
Collectors  of  Campaign  Funds. — Mills  and  Factories  Closed  by  Restriction  and 
Under-Distribution. — Necessary  Collapse  of  Restrictive  Systems  in  the  Pres 
ence  of  Natural  Maximum  Production. 


CHAPTER  XXIV. 

'The  Right  Thing  from  the  Eight  Man  at  the  Right  Time"  as  the  Decisive  Factor 
in  History  Making. — Mr.  Bland  Writes  a  Letter  and  Sees  a  Reporter. — Who 
Shall  Bolt:  Bland  or  Cleveland?— Why  and  How  Mr.  Cleveland  Was  Induced 
to  Bolt. — He  Himself  Forces  16  to  i  Coinage  as  an  Unavoidable  Issue. — 
His  Objections  to  Being  "Elected  Without  New  York"  in  1892.— His  View  of 
"Rainbow  Chasing"  as  Sectional  and  Dangerous.— Mr.  Bland  Consummates 
the  Work  of  the  Rainbow  Chasers  With  an  Interview  Defining  the  Vital  Issues 
of  the  Chicago  Platform.— The  Stand  Made  Against  International  Control  of 
the  American  Treasury  Forces  the  Republican  Party  to  a  Change  of  Base  in 
1896  and  to  Open  Alliance  With  English  Imperialists  in  1898. 


CHAPTER  XXV. 

Bland  as  a  Leader  of  a  Forlorn  Hope.— Forced  into  the  Presidential  Contest  as  the 
Only  Man  on  Whom  the  Democratic  Party  Could  Reorganize.— His  Candidacy  a 
Matter  of  Duty.— His  Nomination  not  Expected  on  Account  of  His  Residence 
in  a  Former  Slave  State.— Popular  Demonstrations  During  His  Lecturing  Tour. 
—Missouri  Conventions  at  Pertle  Springs  and  at  Sedalia.— Formation  of  Bland 
Clubs  in  Missouri.— His  Attitude  Towards  the  Presidency.— Falsity  of  Asser 
tions  that  He  Was  "the  Victim  of  Treachery"  at  Chicago. 


Xvi  TABLE    OF    CONTENTS. 

CHAPTER  XXVI. 

The  Chicago  Platform  Against  a  Corporation  Currency  and  Federal  Invasion  of  the 
Province  of  the  States. — These  Sections  Forced  by  Mr.  Cleveland's  Attempt  to 
Undo  the  Results  of  the  Campaign  of  1892  so  as  to  Restore  the  New  York-Indiana 
Balance  of  Power. — Great  Determination  Shown  by  Mr.  Cleveland  in  This 
Attempt. — Cleveland  and  Bayard  Compared. — Bayard  an  Anti-Federalist. — The 
Democratic  Party  at  its  Last  Gasp  When  Restored  by  the  Chicago  Platform. — 
The  Balloting  for  President  at  Chicago. — Mr.  Sewall  as  a  Compromise  on  the 
Platform. — The  Action  of  the  Convention  Deliberate. 


CHAPTER  XXVII. 

Charles  A.  Dana  on  Bland  as  the  Only  Statesman  in  the  American  Public  Life  of 
the  Last  Quarter  of  the  Century. — Contrast  Between  Eland's  Manners  and  Those 
of  Fashionable  New  York. — He  Visits  New  York  with  Mr.  Bryan  in  1896. — Con 
ditions  Existing  in  New  York  at  That  Time. — Great  Intellectual  and  Defective 
Moral  Force  in  the  New  York  Governing  Class. — Solidarity  of  Wealth  in  1896. — 
Starvation  in  the  Presence  of  Undistributed  Fruit  and  Breadstuffs. — Foreign 
Dictation  in  New  York  Politics. — Will  the  City  be  Forced  to  the  Second  Place? 
—Its  Possibilities  of  Progress.— Its  System  of  Free  Co-Operation  Probably  the 
Best  in  the  World. 


CHAPTER  XXVIII. 

Mr.  Eland's  Years  of  Greatest  Achievement. — The  Climax  of  a  Great  Career  Comes 
in  1898. — His  Stand  Against  Imperialism.—  The  Spanish  War  Used  to  Turn  the 
Flank  of  Chicago  Platform  Democracy  so  as  to  Demonetize  Silver. — Issues 
Precipitated  by  the  Teller  Resolution. — Sanford  B.  Dole  as  the  Agent  of  the 
Imperialistic  Movement. — The  Hawaiian  Government  Employs  Sub-Agents  to 
Attack  Mr.  Eland's  Rear. — Hawaii  and  Cuba  Discussed  Before  the  Spanish  War. 
— Far-Reaching  Influence  of  the  Standard  Oil  Company  and  the  "Sugar  Trust." 
— The  Attempt  to  Shape  the  Policies  of  Both  Parties  so  as  to  Prevent  an  Issue 
Against  Imperialism. — Mr.  Bland  Forces  Open  Fighting. 


CHAPTER  XXIX. 

The  Spanish  War  as  a  War  for  the  Suppression  of  the  Cuban  Republic.— Mr.  Bland 
Forces  Issues  With  President  McKinley  and  Compels  Him  to  go  on  Record.— 
Recognition  of  the  Cuban  Republic  Openly  Opposed  by  the  Administration.— 


TABLE    OF    CONTENTS.  Xvii 

Its  Anxiety  to  Begin  War  Leads  it  to  Fire  on  Merchant  Vessels  Before  War  is 
Declared. — "A  War  for  Humanity"  Converted  into  a  Movement  for  Imperial 
ism.— Failure  of  an  Attempt  to  Turn  Missouri  Democrats  Against  Mr.  Bland.— 
The  Flag  of  the  Cuban  Republic  Torn  Down  at  San  Luis.— Open  Declaration  of 
the  Plan  to  Suppress  the  Cuban  Republic  by  Garrison  Government. — Benevolent 
Assimilation  in  the  Philippines.— What  the  Flag  Meant  for  Mr,  Bland. — His 
Work  for  Higher  Civilization  Finished. 


CHAPTER  XXX. 

Mr.  Bland's  Early  Home  in  Kentucky.— The  Stock  From  Which  He  Sprang.— His 
Life  as  an  Orphan  Boy  on  a  Farm. — At  the  Plow  in  Summer  and  at  School  in 
Winter. — He  Emigrates  to  Missouri  and  to  California. — His  Life  in  the  Mines. 
— Cooking  and  Washing  for  Orphan  Children. — He  Studies  Law  and  Returns  to 
Missouri. — His  Characteristics  as  a  Lawyer. — His  Work  Before  Election  Boards 
Under  the  Drake  Constitution. — Judge  C.  C.  Bland's  Reminiscences  of  His 
Mother. 


CHAPTER  XXXI. 

Mr.  Bland's  Boyhood  in  Kentucky. — Mrs.  Bland  Investigates  and  Interviews  His 
Kinsfolk  and  Old  Neighbors. — Shorthand  Report  of  an  Interview  Between  Mrs. 
Bland  and  Mr.  Bland's  Uncle,  Mr.  Frank  Nail,  of  Ohio  County,  Kentucky. — 
How  Mr.  Bland  Got  His  Characteristics. — His  Truthfulness  as  a  Boy. — The  Fights 
He  Was  Forced  Into. — He  is  Tempted  to  Become  a  Preacher. — Stops  Driving 
Oxen  and  Decides  to  use  His  Intellect.— The  Use  of  Beech  Limbs  by  His  School- 
Master. — The  Questions  He  Debated  as  a  Boy. — His  First  Speech  and  the  Repu 
tation  it  Made  Him. — Life  on  No  Creek  in  the  Days  of  Henry  Clay. 


CHAPTER  XXXII. 

MRS.  BLAND'S  REMINISCENCES— I. 

Mrs.  Bland  Writes  Her  Reminiscences  of  Mr.  Bland's  Home  Life.— Their  First 
Meeting  When  She  Was  a  Schoolgirl.— Mr.  Bland  as  a  Confirmed  Old  Bach 
elor  in  Love  for  the  Second  Time. — He  Tells  Mrs.  Bland  of  His  Romance  at 
Nineteen.— The  Girl  in  White  Apron  aud  Sun  Bonnet  Who  Died  After  Marry 
ing  to  Please  Her  Parents. — Mr.  Bland  Corresponds  With  Mrs.  B.'s  Father. — 
The  Story  of  a  Threatened  Elopement. — At  Washington  Under  Grant. — South 
ern  Pianos  as  Presents. — Mr.  Bland's  Love  of  Children. — His  Domestic  Habits. 
— Sitting  up  all  Night  on  His  Last  Night  in  Congress. — His  Last  Illness  and 
Death. 
c 


XV111  TABLE    OF    CONTENTS. 

CHAPTER  XXXIII 

MRS.  ELAND'S  REMINISCENCES.— II. 

Mr.  Eland's  First  Speech  in  Congress  and  the  Piute  War. — He  Favors  Impeaching 
Grant. — Disappointed  at  Cleveland's  Defeat  in  1888. — Crisp's  Defection  From 
Bimetallism.— "Those  Whom  They  Can't  Bribe  They  Get  Drunk."— Mills  Begs 
Support  and  Sheds  Tears. — Cleveland's  Second  Administration. — Alarm  Over 
the  Coxey  Army. — Closets  Filled  With  Loaded  Rifles. — Clubs  and  Government 
Grass. — Mr.  Eland's  Indignation. — Mr.  Eland's  Lecture  Tour  in  the  West. — His 
Acquaintance  With  Mark  Twain. — The  Chicago  Convention. — What  He  Said 
During  its  Progress.— His  Trip  to  the  East  and  His  Visit  to  Mr.  McKinley.— His 
Logical  Mind  and  His  Faculty  of  Foresight. 


CHAPTER  XXXIV. 

THE  FINAL  WORD. 

This  Volume  as  a  Prophecy  of  Progress. — Evolution  a  Slow  Growth. — Intellectual 
Development  Dependent  on  Moral. — The  Sense  of  Justice  Mr.  Bland  Repre 
sented. — No  Justice  Without  Freedom,  No  Freedom  Without  Justice. — The 
Sympathy  of  Genius  for  Universal  Aspiration. — Political  Economy  and  the 
Law  of  Kindness. — The  Greatest  Development  of  Civilization  Still  in  the 
Future. 


SPEECHES 


COLONIAL  IMPERIALISM  AND  THE  SPANISH  WARS. 

(Complete  Text  from  the  Official  Report  of  the  Speech  Delivered  in  the  House  of 
Representatives,  June  13,  1898,  the  House  Having  Under  Consideration  the  Joint 
Resolution — H.  Res.  259 — to  Provide  for  Annexing  the  Hawaiian  Islands  to  the 
United  States.) 


ENGLISH  PLUTOCRACY  AND  THE  LIBERTIES  OF 
THE  WORLD 

(Mr.  Eland's  Last  Speech  in  Congress,  Delivered  in  the  House  of  Representatives 
on  the  Army  Reorganization  Bill,  January  30,  1899). 


IN  FAVOR  OF  LIBERTY  FOR  ALL  MEN. 

(Peroration  of  a  Fourth  of  July  Address,  Delivered  at  Lebanon,  Missouri,  in  1873). 


"THE  PARTING  OF  THE  WAYS." 

(Delivered  in  the  House  of  Representatives  Saturday,  August  12,  1893,  in  Protest 
Against  the  Bill— H.  R.  i— to  Repeal  a  Part  of  an  Act  Approved  July  4,  1890,  en 
titled  "An  Act  Directing  the  Purchase  of  Silver  Bullion  and  the  Issue  of  Treas 
ury  Notes  Thereon  and  for  Other  Purposes.") 


GOVERNMENT    BY   INJUNCTION  AS  A  MODE  OF 
IMPERIALISM. 

(Delivered  in  the  House  of  Representatives,  July  16,  1894,  Against  a  Resolution  En 
dorsing  the  Cleveland  Administration.) 

xix 


XX  TABLE    OF    CONTENTS. 


A  STAND  IN  TIME  OF  PANIC. 

(From  a  Speech  in  the  House  of  Representatives  Supporting  a  Motion  to  Strike  out 
the  Enacting  Clause  of  the  Gates  Bankruptcy  Bill.— Dec.  8,  1893.) 


EUROPEAN  CONTROL  AT  WASHINGTON. 

(From  a  Speech  in  the  House  of  Representatives,  March  31,  1897.) 


ADMINISTRATIVE     CORRUPTION     DUE    TO    ARBITRARY 
POWER  AND  CIVIL  WAR. 

(From  a  Speech  in  the  House  of  Representatives,  June  25,  1882.) 


AGAINST  BUREAUCRATIC  PRIVILEGE. 

(From  a  Speech  in  the  House  of  Representatives,  June  25,    1882,   Opposing  a  Civil 

Pension  Bill.) 


FRAUD  AND  FORCE  IN  GOVERNMENT. 

(From  a  Speech  in  the  House  of  Kepresentatives,  January  26,  1877.) 


AGAINST  CERNUSCHI  AND  INTERNATIONAL  INTERVEN 
TION  IN  AMERICA. 

(From  a  Speech  in  the  House  of  Representatives,  April  7,  1886.) 


MAKESHIFTS  AND  COMPROMISES. 

(From  a  Speech  in  the  House  of  Representatives,  January  8,  1895.) 


LAWS  TO  PROTECT  THE  STRONG  AGAINST  THE  WEAK. 

(From  a  Speech  in  the  House  of  Representatives,  January  25,  1883. 


TABLE    OF    CONTENTS.  xxi 


STOCK  JOBBING  CONTROL  OF  THE  TREASURY. 

(From  a  Speech  Delivered  in  the  House  of  Representatives,  February  25,  1893.) 


AGAINST  BANK  NOTES  AND  FIAT  PAPER. 

(From  a  Speech  Delivered  in  the  House  of  Representatives,  June  22,  1882.) 


BIMETALLISM  AND  BONDED  DEBT. 

(Delivered  in  the  House  of  Representatives,  January  31,  1898,  in  Support  of  a  Reso 
lution  (Concurrent  Resolution  No.  22)  Declaring  all  bonds  of  the  United  States 
Payable  in  Gold  or  Silver  at  the  Government's  Option  and  that  to  Restore  the 
Coinage  of  Silver  is  not  in  Derogation  of  the  Rights  of  Public  Creditors.) 


EVILS  OF  USING  CORPORATION  NOTES  AS  MONEY. 

(From  a  Speech  in  the  House  of  Representatives,  May  13,  1882,  on  the  Bill  to  En 
able  National  Banks  to  Extend  their  Corporate  Existence.) 


THE  DEBT  PAYING  POWER  OF  WESTERN  PRODUCTS. 

(An  Address  to  the  Senate  Committee  on  Finance,  Delivered  in  1897,  to  a  Delega 
tion  of  New  York  Bankers.) 


MASONRY  AND  ITS  SECRET  CHARITIES. 

(From  an  Address  on  Masonry  Delivered  at  Lebanon,  Mo.,  June  24,  1870.) 


AN  AMERICAN  COMMONER 


CHAPTER  I. 

Western  Leadership  in  the  First  and  Last  Quarters  of  the  Nineteenth  Century. 

The  Flux  and  Reflux  of  Civilization.— The  Individualism  of  the  Plain  American 
and  the  Spirit  of  Progress. — Culture  and  Degeneracy  in  Reactionary  or  Station 
ary  Communities.— The  Impulses  of  Progress  as  they  Operate  Through  Repre 
sentative  Men  Upward  from  the  Undegenerate  Mass. — Western  Conditions  and 
Impulses  as  Benton  Represented  Them. — European  Atavism  and  Degeneracy  in 
the  Seventeenth  and  Eighteenth  Centuries. — Jackson  and  Benton  as  Factors 
in  Political  Revolution  and  Advance. — Sensual  Neurosis  and  Political  Con 
vulsion. — The  Moral  Advance  Represented  by  the  Individual  Character  and  Life 
of  Bland. 


N  THE  first  quarter  of  the  nineteenth  century,  as  in  the  last,  the 
west  asserted  its  power  in  the  union  unexpectedly  and  deci 
sively.    In  each  case  the  disturbance  of  existing  commercial  and 
economic  conditions  resulting  was  followed  by  temporary  polit 
ical  reaction,  but  study  of  the  forces  which  make  disturbance  unavoidable 
will  leave  no  room  for  doubt  that  in  its  effects  both  of  flux  and  reflux  the 
change  was  a  necessary  incident  of  progress. 

From  the  admission  of  Missouri  in  1821,  until  Mr.  Eland's  death  in 
1899,  the  strong  individuality  with  which  its  people  supported  their  own 
governing  principles,  gave  the  state  a  decisive  influence  in  the  gravest 
crises  of  American  history. 

To  be  able  to  see  how  closely  this  individuality  approximated  in  its 
manifestations  the  civilizing  forces  of  the  world  at  large  and,  even  at  the 
expense  of  self-satisfaction,  to  understand  clearly  its  lines  of  divergence,  is 
to  be  better  able  to  understand  the  Americanism  of  the  nineteenth  century 
than  has  been  possible  while  the  spirit  which  resulted  in  and  emanated  from 
the  Civil  war  has  hampered  the  logical  processes  of  the  American  intellect. 


2  AN  AMERICAN  COMMONER. 

Nothing  is  so  valuable  as  knowledge  of  reality.  No  other  knowledge 
is  permanently  valuable  without  it.  The  extent  to  which  the  human  mind 
is  capable  of  deceiving  itself  or  satisfying  itself  with  knowledge  of  phenom 
ena,  the  better  to  avoid  the  temporary  discomfort  of  recognizing  the  vital 
truths  of  progress,  is  only  less  remarkable  than  the  extent  of  the  power  it  is 
capable  of  exerting  when  once  inspired  by  the  consciousness  that  it  has 
become  the  vehicle  of  some  truth  necessary  for  the  world's  advancement. 

All  that  is  heroic  in  the  character  of  the  typical  American  has  been  the 
result  of  such  a  consciousness.  The  motto  on  the  great  seal  of  the  United 
States:  "Novus  Ordo  Saeclorum"  was  inspired  by  the  sublime  hope 
which  made  the  first  quarter  of  the  nineteenth  century  in  America  one  of 
the  most  memorable  periods  in  the  history  of  the  world.  The  most  illit 
erate  axeman  of  western  pioneer  civilization  had  in  him  the  consciousness 
that  he  was  a  part  of  a  force  which  he  believed  was  to  regenerate  the  world. 
Samuel  Houston,  reading  Homer  by  the  firelight  in  a  Tennessee  cabin  and 
so  preparing  himself  for  leadership  at  San  Jacinto,  had  in  him  at  once  the 
sublimity  of  the  American  ideal  and  its  incongruity  with  existing  facts. 
Bred  among  the  Cherokees,  skilled  in  the  craft  both  of  their  savagery  and 
of  Caucasian  civilization,  proud,  violent,  revengeful,  capable  of  the  utmost 
degradation  of  alcoholic  intoxication,  he  was  capable  nevertheless  of  be 
coming  the  vehicle  of  that  great  exterior  force  of  progress  through  which 
humanity  in  the  individual  is  ennobled  and  strengthened  for  the  uplifting  of 
humanity  in  the  mass.  Ideas,  slowly  gathering  strength  from  century  to 
century ;  having  in  them  the  cumulative  power  of  the  divine  self-sacrifices 
of  the  martyrs  of  progress ;  made  potent  by  the  blood  of  the  Rumbolds,  the 
Vanes,  the  Sidneys  of  the  vanguard  of  liberty,  entered  the  souls  of  rude  and 
common  men,  governed  in  their  previous  lives  by  the  common  impulses  of 
merely  animal  humanity,  and  uplifted  them  to  heights  of  self-sacrifice, 
of  heroism,  of  leadership  to  which  in  their  own  right  and  by  virtue  of  their 
own  individualistic  forces  they  were  incapable  even  of  aspiring. 

It  is  a  fact  too  vital  to  be  left  out  of  consideration,  that  in  a  most  impor- 


AN  AMERICAN  COMMONER.  3 

tant  sense,  civilization  is  an  individual  affair.  It  can  come  in  the  mass  only 
as  it  comes  in  the  individuals  composing  the  mass.  In  individuals,  it  can 
come  only  as  an  evolution  of  that  which  is  inherent  in  each  of  them — 
which  is  indeed  the  vital  and  essential  part  of  individual  existence.  What 
ever  is  true,  whatever  is  noble,  whatever  is  heroic  in  the  character  of  any 
man,  whom  we  may  study  as  the  type  of  a  family,  a  clan,  a  people  or  a  race, 
is  potentially  a  part  of  his  nature  and,  as  it  is  educated  and  evolved,  it 
asserts  itself  as  the  potency  of  his  nature.  But  from  the  beginning  of 
recorded  history,  the  evidence  it  offers  is  overwhelming  that  the  brutal,  the 
merely  negative  forces  of  human  nature  will  tend  always  with  cumulative 
power  to  prevent  the  development  of  the  potential  good  in  individual  lives 
unless  the  individual  desire  to  express  it  is  vitalized  by  an  extraneous  force, 
which  can  be  most  conveniently  characterized  here  as  the  spirit  of  civiliza 
tion.  Individuals,  families,  clans  and  peoples  become  permanently  effective 
only  as  they  are  capable  of  responding  in  action  to  the  impulses  which  this 
spirit  gives  them.  It  is  not  always  most  effective  in  communities  where 
literature,  art  and  science  seem  most  advanced.  Indeed  it  happens  period 
ically  that  in  such  communities,  the  machinery  of  progress  falls  into  the 
hands  of  a  class  of  well-meaning  people,  who  derive  large  revenues  from 
modes  of  social  organization  they  fear  to  have  changed.  This  form  of 
conservatism  from  which  no  section  in  the  United  States,  and  no  part  of  the 
world  has  been  free  in  the  past,  explains  why  in  the  beginning  of  the  nine 
teenth  century,  the  forces  of  progress  can  be  seen  operating  with  full  energy 
only  in  those  parts  of  America  where  social  organization  was  as  yet  incho 
ate.  Men  who  were  incapable  of  appreciating  the  niceties  of  the  art,  the 
literature,  the  philosophy  of  the  European  civilization  of  the  time  of 
Madame  de  Maintenon  or  Madame  Pompadour — men  who  spelled  inac 
curately,  whose  literary  education  had  depended  on  the  Bible  and  Plu 
tarch's  Lives,  men  born  in  cabins  and  swaddled  in  homespun,  were  yet  cap 
able  of  advancing  the  guidons  of  civilization  and  of  holding  the  van  of 
progress  under  the  hottest  fire  of  reaction. 


4  AN  AMERICAN  COMMONER. 

It  is  the  law  of  progress  in  all  times  and  countries  that  it  must  depend 
on  such  men  in  every  supreme  crisis.  Every  considerable  advance  in  cul 
ture  is  necessarily  accompanied  by  an  increase  in  the  means  of  gratifying 
luxurious  intellectual  and  animal  appetites.  With  every  high  develop 
ment  of  the  merely  intellectual  and  esthetic  side  of  human  nature,  we  must 
have  also  its  concomitant  of  moral  and  intellectual  degeneracy,  which  must 
finally  vitiate  the  governing  motives  of  social  organization  in  every  com 
munity  in  which  material  progress  and  esthetic  development  are  reckoned 
on  the  one  hand  or  the  other,  as  the  highest  good. 

When  this  point  has  been  reached,  the  hope  of  higher  civilization  lies 
in  the  common  humanity  of  the  race,  which,  if  rude  and  undeveloped,  is 
unspoiled  by  the  customs  of  those  who  have  committed  what  for  communi 
ties,  peoples  and  races  is  the  unpardonable  sin  of  so  abusing  the  opportu 
nities  given  by  the  highest  development  as  to  impel  themselves  backward 
towards  the  moral  plane  of  primitive  brutality. 

It  would  be  misleading  to  assert  and  unscientific  to  suppose  that  even 
in  the  first  quarter  of  the  nineteenth  century,  the  west  was  free  from  indi 
vidual  degeneracy.  It  was  frequently  and  strikingly  illustrated,  as  in  the 
case  of  men  of  high  esthetic  development  who  left  civilization  in  disgust, 
to  lead  the  life  of  trappers  on  the  frontier,  or  even  of  "renegades"  and 
"squaw-men"  among  the  Indians.  This  seemingly  hopeless  reaction  oper 
ated  in  such  cases  as  the  final  test  of  ability  to  survive  under  the  only  condi 
tions  for  which  such  natures  had  become  morally  fit.  We  see  everywhere 
in  history,  this  process  of  regeneration  for  the  individual  degenerates  of 
stationary  or  reactionary  communities.  In  every  great  period  of  disturb 
ance  which  impels  men  to  abandon  levels,  either  higher  or  lower  than  that 
for  which  they  are  fit,  the  same  mercifully  beneficent  law  operates  inflexibly 
to  save  all  who,  in  spite  of  degeneracy,  have  in  them  elements  of  fitness 
for  survival. 

The  primitive  west  necessarily  .  attracted  individuals  of  this  class  and 
necessarily  regenerated  to  a  greater  or  less  extent  such  of  them  as  it  did  not 


AN  AMERICAN  COMMONER.  5 

obliterate.  But  they  were  never  typical  of  its  pioneer  class ;  nor,  either  in 
their  sins  or  their  still  surviving  virtues,  did  they  stand  at  any  time  for 
what  the  west  has  stood  for  in  the  history  of  the  nineteenth  century — the 
irresistible  evolutionary  forces  of  development  in  a  people,  moved  con 
sciously  by  the  animating  power  of  an  ideal  higher  than  the  highest  civili 
zation  the  world  has  ever  attained. 

Taking  Benton's  work  as  the  prophecy  of  Bland's,  we  can  find  sugges 
tions  in  Benton  himself  of  all  the  great  strength  of  the  popular  ideal  he 
represented  and  all  the  inevitable  incongruity,  individual  and  popular, 
between  that  ideal  and  the  reality  of  the  times. 

Believing  theoretically  in  the  right  of  manhood  to  absolute  freedom, 
hating  aristocracy  with  all  the  force  of  his  intellect,  Benton  was  in  actual 
life  as  much  an  aristocrat  of  the  militant  type  as  any  German  grand-duke 
of  the  period  of  the  hundred  years  war  or  as  any  sachem  among  the  Indian 
tribes  of  New  England  and  Virginia  in  the  eighteenth  century.  Himself, 
indeed,  as  it  has  been  said  of  him,  "lofty  and  sour  to  those  who  loved  him 
not,"  he  rejected  absolutely  in  set  terms  as  emphatic  as  he  could  make  them 
— and  in  the  fullest  good  faith — the  theory  that  superior  intellect 
superior  birth,  superior  wealth,  superior  goodness,  superior  advan 
tages  of  any  kind  whatever,  can  give  any  man,  any  community,  any  people 
the  right  to  dominate  any  other.  Holding  this  through  life,  he  not  only 
defended  slavery  as  an  existing  institution  but  held  himself  ready  to  chal 
lenge  and  shoot  in  a  duel  any  one  who  with  an  approximation  to  his  own 
overbearing  habits  of  intellect,  should  assert  against  him  opposing  opinions 
on  any  subject  whatever. 

In  this  he  was  not  singular,  but  typical.  We  find  exactly  the  same 
habits  of  mind  illustrated  in  the  most  notable  and  characteristic  acts  of 
Andrew  Jackson's  public  career  as  they  were  in  his  private  life.  It  was 
because  he  and  Benton  were  men  of  strong  individuality  and  at  the  same 
time  fully  representative  of  the  best  popular  impulses  of  their  times  that 
they  could  feel  no  sense  of  inconsistency  between  professions  which  repre- 


6  AN  AMERICAN  COMMONER. 

sented  their  deepest  beliefs,  their  highest  hopes,  and  practices  which 
expressed  the  effect  on  their  individual  lives  of  the  temporary  conditions 
through  which  their  world  was  passing.  Whether  they  were  shooting  at 
each  other  in  Nashville  or  working  together  in  complete  harmony  at  Wash 
ington  for  the  overthrow  of  the  United  States  bank,  Benton  and  Jackson 
were  equally  sincere  and  equally  representative  of  the  popular  spirit  of  the 
west  of  their  times. 

Convinced  that  all  men  ought  to  be  free  at  any  cost  and  hating  despots 
with  all  the  force  of  his  strenuous  nature,  Jackson's  confirmed  habit  of 
attempting  to  punish  patriotically  as  enemies  of  America  and  of  mankind 
all  who  ventured  to  oppose  him,  laid  him  constantly  open  to  attacks  from 
Clay,  Webster  and  Calhoun  as  being  himself  a  despot  of  the  most  aggres 
sive  type.  He  could  never  have  realized  the  possibility  of  truth  in  such 
attacks,  if  for  no  other  reason  than  that  he  was  debarred  from  doing  so  by 
the  completeness  of  his  realization  that  the  power  he  exercised  was  not  used 
in  his  own  right  but  as  the  representative  of  the  masses  of  the  people  who 
loved  him  because  they  saw  in  him  not  only  their  strength  but  the  faults 
which  condemned  them  individually  to  social  and  political  inferiority — 
permanent  always,  in  America  as  elsewhere,  except  as  those  who  can  not 
themselves  overcome  it,  can  create  some  leader  strong  enough  to  represent 
their  cumulative  force. 

Such  leaders  were  Jackson  and  Benton  in  the  west  of  the  first  half  of 
the  century.  Such  a  leader  was  Bland  under  the  less  primitive  conditions 
of  its  last  quarter. 

Between  the  moral  character  of  Benton  and  Bland  there  is  neither 
occasion  nor  room  for  comparison.  Bland  represented  not  only  in  his  the 
ories,  but  in  the  actual  average  of  his  private  and  public  life  a  civilization 
higher  than  his  times.  By  virtue  of  his  individual  moral  force,  he  will  fin 
ally  become  a  factor  in  civilization  more  energizing  than  Benton  ever  has 
been  or  ever  can  be.  But  it  is  with  the  study  of  the  times  rather  than  of  the 
men  created  by  them,  that  we  must  first  concern  ourselves  in  order  to  be 


AN  AMERICAN  COMMONER.  7 

able  to  understand  the  work  of  leaders  or  the  generations  which  produce 
them. 

We  ought  not  to  shrink  from  the  fact  that  in  Benton's  time'the  "upper 
classes"  in  the  west  were  characterized  by  both  the  militancy  and  the  land- 
hunger  of  the  sixteenth  century.  Great  bodies  of  western  land  had  been  dis 
tributed  on  what  was  identical  in  principle  with  the  feudal  system  of 
rewarding  military  service  with  land  titles.    The  legal  difference    con 
sisted  chiefly  in  the  fact  that  such  titles  in  the  nineteenth  century  were 
forfeitable  to  the  sovereign  power  only  for  non-payment  of  taxes  and  not 
as  in  the  middle  ages  for  failure  to  respond  when  called  on  for  militia  ser 
vice.     No  able-bodied  landholder  of  military   age  could  have   lived   an 
endurable  life  in  the  west,  however,  had  he  refused  to  respond  to  such  a  call 
in  1812  without  an  obviously  sufficient  disability.     Threatened  both  by  the 
savagery  of  primitive  America  and  the  forces  of  the  higher  social  organi 
zation  of  Europe,  the  west  of  that  day  was  intensely  militant.    Democratic 
in  theories  and  social  customs,  the  states  of  the  west,  at  the  time  when 
Ohio,    Indiana,    Kentucky,    Tennessee    and  Missouri    constituted    it, 
were  dominated  politically  by  a  military  aristocracy  consisting  chiefly  of 
intensely  democratic  militia  colonels.     The  impulses  of  the  merely  civil 
order  were  represented  politically,  as  far  as  they  were  represented  at  all, 
by  lawyers,  who  found  themselves,  unable  to  keep  standing  room  in  poli 
tics  except  as  they  were  able  to  reenforce  their  civilianism  by  military  titles. 
Jefferson  who  hated  snakes  and  professional  soldiers  with  impartiality  was 
the  idol  of  the  Seviers,  the  Bentons  and  Jacksons  who  thought  no  more  of 
exchanging  shots  in  political  rivalry  than  the  Launcelots  of  the  mediaeval 
phase  of  the  same  social  condition  did  of  breaking  a  spear  for  honor  and 
amusement  on  meeting  at  the  cross  roads.     From  such  social  conditions 
we  must  expect  all  the  inconsistencies  of  incomplete  self-consciousness. 
Sometimes  such  inconsistencies  will  be  ludicrous  and  often  they  will  be 
painful  as  they  force  themselves  on  the  notice  of  those  who  have  shared 
them.     But  with  them,  and  often  operative  through  them,  we  have  the 


8  AN  AMERICAN  COMMONER. 

greatest  force  of  civilization  always  at  work — the  courage  which  comes 
from  the  inspiration  of  some  great  world-idea,  capable  of  overcoming 
individual  inertia  and  of  supplanting  individual  selfishness  with  devotion, 
not  merely  to  country  but  to  humanity. 

This  courage  in  America  saved  the  modern  world  from  reaction  to 
worse  than  mediaeval  conditions.  The  Puritan  revolution  in  England, 
although  in  the  minds  of  such  men  as  Pym,  Vane,  and  Hampden  it  stood 
for  the  beneficence  of  high  and  constructive  ideas,  became  a  mere  negation, 
and  when  Richard  Cromwell  succeeded  to  the  protectorate,  its  negative 
quality  was  fully  apparent.  The  reaction  which  followed  influenced  the  civ 
ilization  of  the  world  indescribably  for  the  worse.  The  "better  elements"  of 
English  society,  including  the  ecclesiastical  machinery  of  the  political 
church  became  not  merely  corrupt  but  depraved.  The  virtue  of  women 
and  the  honor  of  men  was  equally  vendible  and  equally  cheap.  Sensuality, 
complete  and  bestial,  in  the  typical  individual  of  the  governing  class,  was 
accompanied,  as  it  invariably  is,  by  increasing  readiness  to  resort  to  vio 
lence  as  a  mode  of  government  and  by  insensibility  to  the  sufferings  of  its 
victims.  The  morals  which  degenerate  Rome  had  borrowed  from  fallen 
Greece — which  Greece  in  its  turn  had  assimilated  for  its  ruin  from  the 
ninth  circle  of  the  hell  of  Asiatic  vice,  appeared  in  England  and  worked 
beneath  the  surface  of  aristocratic  society  until  it  was  putrid.  Bestial 
drunkenness,  habitual  even  among  typical  representatives  of  the  political 
ecclesiasticism  of  the  period,  was  one  of  the  least  shameful  of  the  vices 
which  characterized  the  degeneracy  of  the  times.  Aristocratic  England, 
and  the  aristocratic  Europe  of  the  seventeenth  and  eighteenth  centuries 
prepared  the  way  thus  for  the  French  Revolution  and  the  Napoleonic 
wars — which  except  for  such  a  preparation  would  have  been  impossible 
and  too  completely  illogical  to  be  conceivable. 

As  a  result  of  the  chaos  in  Europe,  growing  out  of  the  Napoleonic 
wars,  Louisiana,  a  territory  including  Missouri,  was  added  to  the  domain 
of  the  United  States.  An  immediate  revolution  was  thus  effected  in  Amer- 


AN  AMERICAN  COMMONER.  9 

lean  political  conditions,  but  in  spite  of  one  more  inconsistency  added  to 
those  which  already  impeded  the  intellectual  operations  of  American 
thinkers  and  idealists,  the  high  and  noble  theory  of  liberty  which  saved 
the  nineteenth  century  world  from  the  atavism  of  the  second  half  of  the 
seventeenth  was  not  abandoned.  The  degeneracy  of  the  aristocratic 
classes  of  England  and  of  Continental  Europe,  emboldened  American  Dem 
ocrats  to  declare  the  hopelessness  of  improving  the  world  through  govern 
ment  by  "the  better  element/'  and  nowhere  was  this  declaration  made  with 
greater  faith  in  its  inherent  truth  than  in  the  Missouri  of  the  third  decade 
of  the  nineteenth  century.  This  was  the  beginning  of  the  "Jacksonian" 
epoch  in  American  history — a  period  of  revolutionary  change  not  less  far- 
reaching  than  that  which  has  followed  the  Civil  war. 

Except  for  the  Louisiana  purchase  and  the  admission  of  Missouri, 
the  Jacksonian  epoch  might  have  been  impossible,  but  it  is  probable  that  it 
would  have  been  long  postponed  and  the  country  might  have  passed 
through  it  as  a  period  of  slow  and  imperceptible  change.  The  admission  of 
Missouri  forced  an  immediate  revolution  in  existing  politics  by  giving 
the  west  a  balance  of  power  which  until  then  had  been  exercised  by  the 
middle  states  of  the  Atlantic  seaboard. 

Under  John  Adams  the  west  consisted  only  of  Kentucky,  admitted 
to  the  Electoral  College  in  1792,  and  Tennessee,  admitted  in  1796. 
Through  Jefferson  the  Northwest  Territory  was  added  to  the  national 
domain,  but  on  Jefferson's  motion  slavery  was  abolished  in  it  and  when 
Ohio,  Indiana  and  Illinois  were  admitted  as  "free  states,"  the  existing 
equilibrium  though  obviously  threatened  was  not  disturbed.  In  1824, 
however,  when  Jackson  joined  issues  with  John  Quincy  Adams,  the  west 
consisted  of  Tennessee,  Kentucky,  Ohio,  Indiana,  Illinois  arid  Missouri, 
lying  together  so  as  to  form  a  solid  block  on  the  map  of  the  new  Union, 
which  for  more  than  two  generations  they  were  destined  to  control,  for 
better  or  worse. 

Drawn  together  by  the  community  of  interest  incident  to  their  situa- 


10  AN  AMERICAN  COMMONER. 

tion,  they  were  kept  apart  not  only  by  the  accidental  persistence  of  slavery 
in  Tennessee,  Kentucky  and  Missouri,  but  still  more  by  the  divergence  of 
habit  between  colonial  New  England  and  colonial  Virginia;  between  hab 
its  derived  by  heredity  from  rural  and  village  life  in  England,  between  the 
strong  individualistic  tendencies  of  the  yeoman's  life  and  the  communal 
trend  of  the  society  shaped  by  town  and  village  life.  The  Northwest  Terri 
tory,  settled  in  its  southern  counties  from  Virginia  and  further  to  the 
northward  from  New  England,  still  shows  as  it  must  long  show,  the  line 
of  demarcation  between  the  two  civilizations.  As  an  incident  of  the  sec 
tionalism  of  slavery  at  the  south  and  of  the  extension  of  corporate  privilege 
at  the  north,  they  ceased  to  be  complementary  the  one  to  the  other  as  it 
is  natural  that  they  should  be,  and  became  for  the  time  being  fiercely  an 
tagonistic.  Had  it  been  otherwise,  the  influence  of  this  great  block  of 
states  might  have  been  sufficient  to  decide  without  struggle  much  of  that 
which  has  been  decided  at  a  cost  too  great  to  be  thought  of  without  poign 
ant  ard  lasting  regret.  It  is  useless  to  regret,  ho-.vever,  except  as  it 
enables  us  to  understand,  and  the  matter  of  greatest  importance  in  the  poli 
tics  of  our  present  and  future,  is  to  understand  the  governing  forces  by 
which  the  existing  Union  began  to  be  controlled  when  it  first  came  into 
existence.  That  as  it  now  exists,  it  dates  not  from  i776,  but  from  the 
Louisiana  purchase,  the  conquest  of  California,  the  consequent  repeal  of 
the  Missouri  Compromise  and  the  resulting  surrender  at  Appomattox, 
needs  only  to  be  stated  to  be  self-evident  to  every  one  whose  attention  to 
the  isolated  facts  of  American  history  has  been  sufficient  to  enable  him  to 
make  a  correct  generalization. 

Jefferson's  idea  that  Missouri  entered  into  the  Union  as  a  sovereign 
state,  free  to  withdraw  from  it  under  the  constitution  as  interpreted  by  the 
Virginia  and  Kentucky  resolutions,  was  comfortable  to  him  intellectually 
and  morally.  It  enabled  him  to  rid  himself  of  the  repulsive  thought  that  in 
buying  the  territory  he  was  buying  the  people  also.  He  could  reassure 
himself  against  fears  for  his  ideal  by  the  thought  that  he  had  merely 


AN  AMERICAN  COMMONER.  1 1 

purchased  the  liberty  of  the  people  of  the  territory  from  European  despot 
ism  and  that  at  their  own  discretion  they  were  to  form  republics  absolutely 
free,  independent,  self-governing  and  sovereign — in  the  Union  or  out  of  it. 
It  was  great  comfort  to  him,  no  doubt,  to  denounce  as  "enemies  of  the 
human  race"  those  who  sought  to  "limit  the  sovereignty"  of  Missouri  as 
those  whom  Mr.  Bland  opposed  after  the  Spanish  war  sought  to  limit  the 
sovereignty  of  Hawaii,  Cuba  and  Puerto  Rico.  In  his  own  mind  Jefferson 
remained  consistent  with  the  theories  of  the  Declaration  of  Independence 
to  the  end,  but  when  the  issue  he  foresaw  in  1820  came  on  the  admission 
of  California  and  Kansas,  it  was  evident  that  the  logic  of  the  facts  was 
against  the  Union  of  sovereign  states  in  which  he  believed  and  it  was  de 
cided  at  Appomattox  that  such  a  Union  never  existed — that  it  never  shall 
exist!  The  belief  in  it,  however,  was  a  factor  in  the  history  which  was 
made  when  Missouri  was  admitted  to  the  Union  and  it  is  too  important  to 
history  to  be  overlooked — especially  by  those  who  wish  to  understand  the 
intellectual  attitude  Mr.  Bland  retained  through  his  political  life  from  the 
time  he  opposed  Grant  in  i872  to  the  end  when  the  same  issues  had 
recurred  in  1898  with  added  emphasis. 

Under  Jackson  when  Calhoun,  radically  opposed  to  Jefferson  on  the 
fundamental  principle  of  government  by  consent  and  denying  openly  that 
law,  in  order  to  be  just  must  be  representative,  attempted  to  enforce  the 
Jeffersonian  hypothesis  that  the  states  were  self-governing  and  sovereign, 
Jackson  threatened  to  hang  him  as  a  traitor  and  by  doing  so,  really  decided 
that  in  1 86 1  the  seceding  states  should  be  coerced  back  into  the  Union,  that 
slavery  should  be  abolished  in  1863  without  regard  to  its  recognition  by 
the  constitution  and  that  in  1866  the  Union,  north  and  south,  should  be 
reconstructed  on  the  new  basis  which  General  Butler  represented  in  i8?2 — 
not  so  much  by  what  he  advocated  as  legislation  as  by  the  realities  of  the 
political  forces  back  of  his  almost  unimaginable  and  frequently  unintelli 
gible  astuteness. 

The  greatest  crises  in  the  history  of  the  United  States  can  not  be  fixed 


12  AN  AMERICAN  COMMONER. 

by  an  exact  date,  but  as  far  as  it  is  possible  to  limit  them  so,  they  may  be 
considered  as  reached  (i)  in  i776,  when  the  Declaration  of  Independence 
was  adopted;  (2)  in  1800,  when  the  federalists  were  defeated  by  Jefferson 
on  the  issues  of  the  Virginia  and  Kentucky  resolutions  against  the  Alien 
and  Sedition  Laws;  (3)  in  1828,  when  the  west,  represented  by  Jackson, 
with  Benton  as  the  premier  of  his  policies,  asserted  its  balance  of  power  as  a 
controlling  force;  (4)  in  i872,  when  "original  abolitionists"  who  actually 
believed  in  the  principles  of  individual  liberty  through  which  the  republi 
can  party  had  been  first  organized,  rallied  to  defeat  republican  candidates 
who  in  their  view  represented  the  threat  of  imperialism  and  military  gov 
ernment;  and  finally  in  the  decade  between  1890  and  1900  when  the 
western  states  reasserted  themselves  more  strongly  than  they  had  done 
since  Jackson — thus  preparing  the  way  for  the  campaign  of  1896,  for  the 
Spanish  war  and  that  new  movement  for  imperialism  and  a  closer  assimila 
tion  of  American  and  European  institutions  against  which  Bland  contended 
when  he  opposed  the  coercion  of  Puerto  Rico  and  military  control  in  Cuba, 
with  a  view  to  its  annexation. 

These  crises  must  be  kept  in  mind  and  their  relation  to  each  other 
must  be  understood,  if  the  work  done  by  Mr.  Bland  and  the  times  in  which 
he  did  it  are  to  be  understood.  In  i776,  in  1800,  in  1828,  in  1860,  in  i872 
and  again  from  1890  to  1900,  the  real  issue  of  politics  was  the  control  of 
the  police  power  of  the  government  as  a  means  of  controlling  the  supply 
of  money  and  commodities.  As  the  survival  of  the  actual  slave-ownership 
in  America  was  incidental  merely,  and  as  it  has  been  disposed  of  as  a  fact,  it 
should  be  set  aside  except  as  it  belongs  to  the  merely  phenomenal  politics 
of  the  periods  considered.  From  the  time  Wilberforce  made  his  first  speech 
against  the  Liverpool  merchants  who  indorsed  and  eulogized  the  slave  trade 
slavery  was  so  obviously  an  anachronism  in  Europe  and  America  that  it 
can  not  now  deserve  to  be  treated  as  an  actual  economic  condition.  The 
permanent  realities  of  our  politics  remained  throughout  the  struggle  over 
slavery  exactly  what  they  are  still,  what  they  always  will  be — the  issue  of 


AN  AMERICAN  COMMONER.  13 

the  extent  to  which  the  coercive  power  of  the  government  through  legis 
lation  enforceable  by  police  and  soldiery,  should  be  used  in  controlling  the 
supply  of  commodities  and  money. 

Mr.  Bland  believed  at  all  times  in  minimizing  this  coercive  control  and 
he  so  far  represented  the  governing  idea  of  a  developing  civilization  in  this 
belief  that  were  the  "Tu  Quoque"  argument  not  always  available  in  politics, 
the  twentieth  century  would  have  been  inaugurated  as  was  the  nineteenth 
by  some  splendid  and  world-compelling  triumph  for  the  idea  that  civiliza 
tion  means  the  least  possible  coercion — that  "the  government  is  best  which 
governs  least" — that  kindness,  forbearance,  reason,  persuasion  should  be 
the  mode  of  civilization  rather  than  the  cannon  of  the  navy  and  the  bayo 
nets  of  the  standing  army. 

What  the  "Tu  Quoque"  argument  means,  history  shows  when  Mis 
souri,  with  Benton  in  the  Senate,  asserted  the  demand  of  the  west  for  popu 
lar  control  of  the  currency;  for  the  issue  of  money  only  by  government 
and  for  the  least  possible  restriction  by  government  of  the  supply  of  com 
modities. 

The  demand  for  the  abolition  of  slavery  became  so  pressing  that  under 
James  K.  Polk,  issues  were  wholly  changed  and  by  the  conquest  of  Mex 
ican  territory  to  be  organized  as  slave  states,  the  west  was  alienated  from 
the  support  of  the  south  in  all  that  for  which  Benton  and  Jackson  had 
stood.  Considered  merely  as  a  piece  of  "practical  politics,"  the  "expan 
sion"  by  the  invasion  of  Mexico  and  the  treaty  of  Guadaloupe  Hidalgo  was 
the  worst  blunder  of  modern  times.  It  cost  the  ruin  of  the  south,  the  disor 
ganization  of  the  Democratic  party,  and,  for  the  direct  producer  of  the 
south  and  west,  the  loss  of  the  control  of  the  economic  policies  of  the  federal 
government— which  means  everything.  The  nomination  of  Lewis  Cass 
involved  no  recession  from  policies  which  necessitated  disaster.  Though 
it  seemed  to  put  the  agricultural  northwest  at  the  front,  giving  it  the  bal 
ance  of  power  which  the  west  assumed  under  Jackson,  it  really  did  nothing 
more  than  make  a  false  pretense  at  a  time  when  hypocrisy  was  not  only 


14  AN  AMERICAN  COMMONER. 

futile  but  absurd.  Cass  was  thrust  aside,  the  issue  on  slavery  recurred 
between  north  and  south  and  the  permanent  realities  of  American  politics 
did  not  reappear  until,  largely  as  a  result  of  what  Mr.  Bland  achieved  and 
represented,  the  northwest  took  the  lead  against  European  policies  in  the 
last  decade  of  the  century. 

That  in  the  time  of  Bland  as  in  that  of  Benton,  the  influence  of  the 
west  was  exerted  to  save  the  civilization  of  the  world  from  reaction, 
becomes  clear  whenever  an  impartial  and  sufficiently  thorough  examination 
of  the  facts  is  made.  But  it  does  not  follow  that  there  is  occasion  either 
for  boasting  of  the  past  or  presumption  in  the  future  because  of  it.  The 
western  social  life  Benton  represented  had  the  supreme  merit  of  being 
evolutionary,  but  the  merciless  extermination  of  the  Indians,  the  immense 
quantities  of  alcohol  used  in  trading  and  consumed  by  Caucasians  during 
the  pioneer  period,  and  the  habit  of  imperiousness  which  belongs  to  indi 
vidualism  educated  through  militancy,  had  on  the  class  which  controls  con 
ventions  and  decides  what  is  or  is  not  "practical  politics"  all  the  effects 
of  a  neurosis,  subjecting  them  to  the  influence  of  sudden  impulses  of  pas 
sion  or  appetite  and  operating  as  a  disease  of  the  will  to  cripple  them  in 
their  usefulness  as  representatives  of  popular  ideals  and  aspirations. 

When  we  recall  the  fact  that  many  of  the  speeches  which  did  most  to 
force  the  Civil  war,  were  made  by  habitual  drunkards  or  by  men  incapable 
at  important  crises  of  resisting  the  temptation  to  incapacitate  their  brains 
by  overstimulation ;  when  we  look  into  the  private  life  of  men  reverenced 
north  and  south  almost  as  demigods,  and  see  how  their  lack  of  self-con 
trol  made  them  and  the  country  which  condoned  their  self-indulgence  a 
victim  of  the  wild  and  erratic  gusts  of  disordered  passion  which  belong  to 

• 

the  pathology  of  nervous  lesion  from  alcoholization,  we  need  not  be  fanat 
ical  opponents  of  intemperance  to  appreciate  how  great  has  been  the 
moral  advance  shown  in  the  contrast  between  such  lives  and  the  even  more 
completely  representative  life  of  Bland— a  man  who,  though  he  had 
through  life  the  unspoiled  sensitive  nerves  of  childhood,  could  work 


AN  AMERICAN  COMMONER.  15 

waist-deep  in  water  in  the  mines  of  the  far  west,  live  among  desperadoes 
and  Indians  and  finally  spend  a  quarter  of  a  century  in  the  public  life  of  a 
period  of  demoralized  politics,  retaining  always  the  balance,  the  self-poise, 
the  sobriety,  the  simplicity,  the  good  judgment  and  the  courage  which  are 
natural  traits  of  undegenerate  manhood. 

Considering  some  periods  of  history,  it  is  hard  to  escape  the  false  con 
clusion  that  human  life  itself  under  its  most  favorable  conditions  is  a  dis 
ease.  The  latter  half  of  the  seventeenth  and  the  first  half  of  the  eight 
eenth  centuries  was  such  a  period  in  England  and  in  Western  Europe. 
The  widespread  habits  of  neurotic  sensuality,  showing  itself  most  openly 
in  an  epidemic  of  alcoholism,  had  not  exhausted  its  force  in  the  first  quar 
ter  of  the  nineteenth.  The  nervous  stress  incident  to  such  crimes  of  vio 
lence  as  the  Napoleonic  wars  inevitably  perpetuated  as  an  epidemic  the 
habitual  and  diseased  resort  to  alcoholic  stimulation,  and  in  America,  re 
lated  tendencies  postponed  the  return  to  natural  habits. 

In  the  west,  however,  as  early  as  the  first  decade  of  the  nineteenth 
century,  there  was  a  strong  reaction  against  the  results  of  heredity  from 
the  degeneracy  of  seventeenth  and  eighteenth  century  Europe.  The  "plain 
people"  of  the  entire  west,  under  the  eloquence  of  preachers  who  scarcely 
less  fiercely  than  Whitefield  himself,  warned  them  of  the  destructive  effects 
of  indulging  reactionary  impulses,  were  stirred  to  the  depths  of  their  na 
tures  by  the  desire  for  individual  progress  and  for  the  uplifting  of  human 
ity.  Moral  purpose,  always  present  as  a  latent  force,  developed  in  them  un 
til  it  called  into  play  that  for  which  the  west  has  been  most  admirable  even 
when  its  detractors  have  held  it  least  admirable  in  everything  else — the 
courage  of  individual  initiative.  For  the  people,  for  the  race  which  develops 
this  quality,  and  with  it  the  rectitude  of  purpose  which  alone  can  make  it 
effective,  such  individual  initiative  is  the  supreme  virtue  through  which 
salvation  comes  in  every  great  crisis  where  without  it,  reaction  would  be 
certain.  This  courage,  this  moral  force,  this  heroic  ability  to  advance  singly 
and  to  stand  unsupported  for  an  ideal,  higher  than  that  of  contemporary 


1 6  AN  AMERICAN  COMMONER. 

moral  and  intellectual  inertia,  has  always  characterized  the  really  represen 
tative  American  of  all  sections,  but  it  has  especially  characterized  the  plain 
American  of  the  unpretentious,  unspoiled,  unartificial  type  Bland  so  well 
represented  in  his  public  and  private  life. 

The  effect  of  such  initiative,  acting  now  with  and  now  against  the 
logic  of  events,  we  are  about  to  study  in  attempting  to  get  at  the  realities 
of  the  last  quarter  of  the  nineteenth  century  that  we  may  be  the  better  able 
to  adapt  our  intellectual  processes  to  the  necessities  of  the  twentieth. 


WILLIAM  McKINLEY. 


GROVER  CLEVELAND. 


THOMAS  A.  HENDRICKS. 


THOMAS  B.  REED. 


CHAPTER  II. 

"There  is  the  East — there  is  India." — Benton's  Prevision  of  the  Results  of  Opening 
the  Trans-Mississippi  West. — Benton  and  Bland  as  Vehicles  of  World-Moving 
Ideas. — The  Constructive  Impulses  of  the  People  Greater  than  the  Destructive 
forces  of  Civil  War. — Bland  as  a  representative  of  the  Meaning  of  the  Last 
Quarter  of  the  Nineteenth  Century. — Western  America  and  Europe. — American 
Plowmen  and  American  Railroads  against  Malthus. — The  Nineteenth  Century 
and  the  Future. — Bland  as  a  Transmitter  of  Popular  Impulses. — The  Feudalism 
of  Land  and  of  Corporations. — The  New  England  Village  and  The  Virginia  Es 
tate  in  Sociology. 

I  HE  history  of  progress  is  a  history  of  great  ideas,  taking  hold 
on  the  minds  of  men  and  compelling  them  to  action.  In  sci 
ence,  in  art,  in  literature,  in  religion,  in  politics,  the  efficient 
man  is  always  the  man  who  has  assimilated  intellectually  and 
morally,  some  great,  slowly-developing  truth  which  has  grown  from  mind 
to  mind  and  from  century  to  century,  compelling  one  generation  after  an 
other  to  a  more  nearly  complete  consciousness  of  itself  and  of  its  relation  to 
the  world's  future. 

Such  an  idea,  taking  hold  on  the  mind  of  Thomas  H.  Benton,  com 
pelled  him  to  become  one  of  the  master  forces  of  his  generation,  a  prophet 
of  the  future  of  the  Trans-Mississippi  west  and  of  its  influence  on  civiliza 
tion.  In  1849,  when  the  actual  conditions  of  1900  would  have  seemed  in 
credible,  had  they  been  imaginable,  Benton — his  intellect  quickened  by  his 
faith  in  the  capacity  of  the  masses  for  progress — pointed  westward  to  the 
Rocky  Mountains  and  exclaimed :  "There  is  the  East !  There  is  India !" 
This  sentence,  which  has  been  inscribed  on  the  pedestal  of  his  statue  in 
St.  Louis,  was  the  most  notable  utterance  of  his  life,  and  its  importance  ap 
pears  when  it  is  considered  in  its  connection.  Anticipating  the  results  of 
opening  the  country  west  of  the  Mississippi  River  by  railroads  connecting 
the  Atlantic  and  Pacific  oceans,  Benton  said : 

"We  live  in  extraordinary  times  and  are  called  upon  to  elevate  our- 

2  17 


1 8  AN  AMERICAN  COMMONER. 

selves  to  the  grandeur  of  the  occasion.  Three  and  a  half  centuries  ago  the 
great  Columbus,  the  man  who  was  afterwards  carried  home  in  chains  from 
the  new  world  he  had  discovered — this  great  Columbus  in  the  year  1492 
departed  from  Europe  to  arrive  at  the  east  by  going  to  the  west.  It  was 
a  sublime  conception !  He  was  in  the  line  of  success  when  the  intervention 
of  two  continents,  not  dreamed  of  before,  stopped  his  progress.  Now  in 
the  nineteenth  century,  mechanical  genius  enables  his  great  design  to  be 
fulfilled.  In  the  beginning  and  in  barbarous  ages,  the  sea  was  a  barrier  to 
the  intercourse  of  nations.  It  separated  nations  until  mechanical  genius 
invented  the  ship  which  converted  the  barrier  into  a  facility.  Then  land 
and  continents  became  an  obstruction.  The  two  Americas  intervening 
have  prevented  Europe  and  Asia  from  communicating  in  a  straight  line. 
For  three  centuries  and  a  half  this  obstacle  has  frustrated  the  grand  de 
sign  of  Columbus.  Now  in  our  day  mechanical  genius  has  again  tri 
umphed  over  the  obstacles  of  nature  and  converted  into  a  facility  what  had 

long  been  an  impassable  obstacle A  conveyance  being  invented 

which  annihilates  both  time  and  space,  we  hold  the  intervening  land !  We 
hold  the  obstacle  which  stopped  Columbus.  We  are  in  line  between  Eu 
rope  and  Asia.  We  have  it  in  our  power  to  remove  that  obstacle — to  con 
vert  it  into  a  facility  for  carrying  him  to  his  land  of  promise  and  of  hope 
with  a  rapidity,  a  precision  and  a  safety  unknown  to  all  ocean  navigation. 
A  king  and  queen  started  him  upon  this  grand  enterprise.  It  lies  in  the 
hands  of  a  republic  to  complete  it.  It  is  in  our  hands — in  the  hands  of  the 
people  of  the  United  States  of  the  first  half  of  the  nineteenth  century. 
Let  us  raise  ourselves  up !  Let  us  rise  to  the  grandeur  of  the  occasion ! 
Let  us  complete  the  grand  design  of  Columbus  by  putting  Europe  and 
Asia  into  communication — and  that  to  our  advantage,  through  the  heart 
of  our  country !  Let  us  give  to  his  ships  a  continued  course  unknown  to  all 
former  times!  Let  us  make  an  iron  road  and  make  it  from  sea  to  sea, 
states  and  individuals  making  it  east  of  the  Mississippi  and  the  nation  mak 
ing  it  west !  Let  us  now  in  this  convention  rise  above  everything  sectional, 
personal,  local!  Let  us  beseech  the  national  legislature  to  build  a  great 
road  upon  the  great  line  which  unites  Europe  and  Asia — the  line  which 
will  find  on  our  continent  the  Bay  of  San  Francisco  on  one  end,  St.  Louis 
in  the  middle  and  the  great  national  metropolis  and  emporium  on  the 
other — a  line  which  shall  be  adorned  with  its  crowning  honor — the  colossal 
statue  of  the  great  Columbus  whose  design  it  accomplishes,  hewn  from  the 
granite  mass  of  a  peak  of  the  Rocky  Mountains,  the  mountain  itself  the 


AN  AMERICAN   COMMONER.  19 

pedestal  and  the  statue  a  part  of  the  mountain,  pointing  with  outstretched 
arms  to  the  western  horizon  and  saying  to  the  flying  passengers :  There 
is  the  East !  There  is  India !" 

This  is  a  definite  and  valid  expression  of  the  greatest  and  most  benefi 
cent  thought  that  moved  the  American  mind  during  the  generation  in 
which  Benton  was  so  conspicuous  a  figure.  Since  the  beginning  of  the 
Republic,  the  American  idea  of  peaceful  progress,  operating  through 
justice  and  helpfulness  to  elevate  the  world,  had  moved  no  one  more  deeply 
than  Benton  must  have  been  moved  before  it  could  have  been  possible  for 
his  mind  to  take  such  hold  upon  the  deepest  reality  of  his  generation — the 
constructive  thought  which,  in  spite  of  the  selfishness  and  spitefulness  of 
merely  negative  politics,  forced  the  world  forward  and  gave  the  United 
States  a  far  more  compelling  influence  at  the  end  of  the  century  than  could 
have  been  imaginable  at  the  beginning. 

To  examine  adequately  the  operations  of  this  constructive  thought, 
greater  in  itself  than  the  mind  of  any  man,  of  any  people,  of  any  race,  is  to 
become  capable  of  ridding  ourselves  of  the  spirit  of  self-glorification  on  the 
one  hand  and  antagonism  and  negation  on  the  other.  It  is  essentially  the 
spirit  of  civilization  and  it  operates  through  the  intellect  of  individuals  and 
of  peoples;  but  no  race,  no  people,  no  individual  can  represent  it  except 
through  a  governing  sympathy  with  its  essence  of  justice. 

To  learn  from  the  consideration  of  our  past  how  far  as  a  people  and  as 
individuals  we  have  been  capable  of  representing  the  impulse  of  construc 
tive  justice  is  to  have  the  clearest  possible  insight  into  the  realities  of  our 
present  and  the  possibilities  of  our  future.  This  knowledge,  inspiring  and 
potent  as  it  must  be  always  to  those  who  are  willing  to  make  a  right  use  of 
it,  can  be  attained  in  no  other  way  so  well  as  by  an  adequate  understanding 
of  the  life  of  some  really  representative  man  who  at  the  expense  of  all  other 
qualities  has  been  governed  by  a  sense  of  justice,  essentially  inherent  but 
evoked  and  made  efficient  by  sympathy. 

By  the  simplicity  of  his  character ;  by  his  freedom  from  the  feeling  of 


20  AN  AMERICAN   COMMONER. 

superiority  which  so  hampered  Benton;  by  his  plainness  and  directness- 
above  all  by  his  personal  goodness,  Richard  P.  Bland  became  in  his  genera 
tion  more  thoroughly  than  any  man  had  been  in  the  generation  which  pro 
duced  Benton,  a  representative  of  the  power  latent  in  such  unspoiled  man 
hood  as  that  of  the  "embattled  farmers"  of  Lexington  and  Concord,  who 
in  their  day  were  workers  of  a  revolution  great  enough  to  make  possible 
the  yet  greater  revolution  in  the  economy  of  the  world  produced  by  the 
American  workers  of  the  last  quarter  of  the  nineteenth  century. 

The  plowmen  of  the  Trans-Mississippi  west  exerted  in  the  year  of 
Mr.  Eland's  death  an  influence  in  the  affairs  of  the  world  greater  than  that 
of  all  its  standing  armies  and  navies.  Benton  thought  only  of  the  influ 
ence  of  the  west  in  realizing  the  idea  of  Columbus  by  bringing  east  and 
west  together  through  a  paradox  by  which  the  distance  between  them 
would  be  made  a  figure  of  speech.  Bland  as  he  represented  the  construc 
tive  impulses  of  the  west,  stood  for  the  power  which,  through  its  own  pro 
ductiveness  of  food  supplies  had  made  possible  in  England  the  continu 
ous  increase  in  population  which  has  demonstrated  the  falsity  of  the  repul 
sive  theory  of  Malthus  that  without  war,  plague,  and  famine  to  decimate 
the  unfavored,  the  "favored  classes"  can  not  exist  in  comfort. 

This  increasing  productiveness  of  the  west,  accompanied  by  similar 
results  of  development  in  South  America,  Australia,  and  Russia,  is  by  far 
the  most  important  fact  of  the  nineteenth  century.  It  forced  to  the  de 
fensive,  not  merely  the  aristocratic  landholders  of  England,  but  the  still 
more  powerful  class  which  controls  the  financial  and  commercial  policies 
of  the  British  Empire,  of  Europe,  and  finally  of  North  and  South  America 
— as  far  as  it  is  possible  for  North  and  South  America  to  be  controlled  by 
the  intelligence  and  skill  of  militant  commercialism  in  Europe. 

So  great  has  been  the  ignorance  of  the  realities  of  American  politics 
necessarily  produced  by  the  passions  of  such  a  civil  war  as  ours,  that  we 
have  only  begun  to  suspect  the  meaning  of  the  constructive  forces  which 
have  worked  below  the  surface  of  our  base  and  corrupting  politics,  to  make 


AN  AMERICAN  COMMONER.  21 

possible  for  the  people  of  the  United  States  and  of  the  world,  a  fuller  real 
ization  of  their  always  limitless  possibilities  of  efficiency  and  happiness. 

The  study  of  the  conditions,  and  popular  impulses  which  made  Mr. 
Bland  a  force  in  national  and  international  politics  is  so  well  worth  while 
for  the  twentieth  century  that  it  may  justly  be  called  a  fundamental  requi 
site  for  the  comprehension  of  whatever  is  comprehensible  in  the  nineteenth. 
It  ought  to  convince  us  that  the  origin  of  world-forces  is  in  the  people  and 
that  only  through  the  utmost  possible  freedom  of  development  for  all  the 
peoples  of  the  world,  can  the  world's  highest  possible  civilization  be  at 
tained.  This  was  the  idea  which  made  Mr.  Bland  a  representative  man.  If 
in  studying  its  development  we  become  capable  of  being  moved  as  he  was 
by  a  compelling  sympathy  for  the  weak  in  their  longing  for  intellectual  and 
moral  strength;  in  their  struggling;  in  their  aspirations  for  calmness;  in 
their  hope  of  justice  and  their  anxious  expectation  of  liberty,  then  we  may 
learn  not  merely  to  understand  his  actual  significance  in  his  generation,  but 
to  see  the  impulse  which  produced  him  clearly  at  work  in  the  present  as  the 
controlling  force  of  the  future ! 

The  middle  ages  produced  in  Europe  generally  and  in  England  espec 
ially,  two  parallel  developments  of  feudalism — that  of  privilege  in  land 
granted  by  the  sovereign  power  and  that  of  corporate  organization  employ 
ing  certain  delegated  powers  of  the  sovereign. 

Both  developments  were  a  result  of  natural  causes  and  both  have  oper 
ated  as  modes  of  progress.  It  is  not  possible  here  to  define  the  limits  be 
yond  which  they  become  reactionary,  but  dealing  with  them  both  as  exist 
ing  facts  of  the  colonial  civilization  of  the  eighteenth  century  out  of  which 
grew  the  American  conditions  of  the  nineteenth,  we  can  understand  them 
as  the  causes  which  first  defined  the  issues  of  division  in  our  politics. 

In  New  England  during  the  eighteenth  century,  the  village  life  of 
England  gave  its  organizing  impulse  to  society  and  shaped  both  political 
and  commercial  systems.  In  remote  New  England  villages  of  the  present 
day,  we  can  still  see  the  effects  of  this  impulse  in  their  almost  communal 


22  AN  AMERICAN  COMMONER, 

method  of  life.  Individual  ownership  is  rigidly  established  and  main 
tained,  but  the  dwelling  houses  are  often  built  directly  on  the  village  street 
so  that  their  front  doors  open  on  the  outside  world  and  establish  with  it  the 
most  direct  and  permanent  connection  possible.  The  training  developed 
from  such  conditions  favored  organization  as  strongly  as  conditions  in 
Virginia  and  the  states  settled  from  Virginia  favored  individual  initiative — 
sometimes  through  organization,  but  often  at  the  expense  of  it. 

Virginia  in  the  eighteenth  century  represented  the  landholding  im 
pulses  which  had  governed  the  militant  classes  of  England  since  the  Nor 
man  conquest.  Social  standing  was  based  on  land  and  the  desire  for 
"broad  acres"  so  dominated  society  that  it  was  one  of  the  controlling  factors 
in  the  movement  which  settled  the  southwest  and  opened  to  civilization  the 
vast  territory  acquired  by  the  Louisiana  purchase.  The  system,  tending 
always  to  separate  families  by  such  distances  between  homesteads  as  neces 
sarily  minimize  communal  life,  fostered  the  individual  intellect  at  the  ex 
pense  of  compact  social  organization.  The  result  was  the  production  of 
individual  intellects  superior  to  system  and  to  circumstance — such  intel 
lects  as  that  of  Jefferson,  who  seeing  in  the  desire  for  extensive  holdings  of 
land  an  obstacle  to  progress  struck  at  the  roots  of  the  existing  social  order 
in  Virginia  by  laws  enacted  to  make  effective  his  declaration  that  "the  earth 
belongs  in  usufruct  to  the  living." 

He  intended  thus  to  prevent  one  generation  from  transmitting  as  a 
hereditary  privilege  the  advantages  conceded  to  its  more  efficient  workers 
in  order  to  make  their  efficiency  possible.  As  far  as  landholding  in  Vir 
ginia  and  the  states  settled  from  it  was  concerned,  he  succeeded.  Land- 
holding  under  the  conditions  he  forced  was  no  longer  a  reliable  vehicle  for 
the  transmission  of  class  privilege  or  for  conserving  clan  advantage.  The 
feudal  system  of  land  tenure  was  destroyed  in  the  house  of  its  friends. 
Virginia  sacrificed  the  possibilities  of  organizing  the  Union  in  the  only  way 
which  could  have  perpetuated  its  peculiar  social  order.  The  colonial  land- 
holding  class  as  the  "estates  of  the  realm"  ceased  to  exist  as  a  result  of 


AN  AMERICAN  COMMONER.  23 

Virginia  leadership  and '  little  by  little,  privilege  sought  perpetuation 
through  grants  of  the  sovereign  power,  delegated  for  the  purposes  of  cor 
porate  organization. 

The  Bland  family  in  Virginia  represented  during  colonial  times  the 
landholding  idea  and  they  developed  under  it  the  same  marked  individual 
character  which  showed  itself  in  Washington,  Jefferson  and  Edmund  Ran 
dolph.  Elands  of  the  second  generation  after  the  revolution  in  social  and 
economic  conditions  of  Virginia  produced  by  the  Jeffersonian  idea,  found 
themselves  in  Kentucky — no  longer  with  "baronial  possessions"  but  with 
an  approximation  to  such  a  farm  as  in  the  third  generation  Mr.  Bland  him 
self  owned  and  tilled  in  Missouri.  The  Civil  war  having  destroyed  the 
last  vestiges  in  America  of  the  feudal  system  of  agricultural  production, 
Mr.  Bland  found  himself  a  representative  of  the  producer's  right  to  exist 
and  to  develop  under  conditions  created  by  the  vast,  the  unprecedented, 
the  world-wide  growth  of  co-operative  organization  through  feudal  grants 
perpetuated  under  the  system  which  produced  first  the  guilds  of  the  middle 
ages,  then  the  free  cities  of  Flanders  and  Germany  and  finally  the  Hanse 
league  as  a  prophecy  of  the  modern  East  India  and  South  African  com 
panies  and  of  the  contemporaneous  use  of  the  police  and  war-making  pow~ 
ers  of  government  for  commercial  purposes. 

Fully  realizing  the  odds  against  all  he  stood  for  in  such  a  contest,  Mr. 
Bland  did  his  work  with  the  unostentatious  strength  of  the  man  who  feels 
the  ineffectiveness  of  his  own  forces  and  appeals  to  the  omnipotent  power 
which  operates  through  the  sense  of  duty  in  the  individual  and  in  the  mass. 


CHAPTER  III. 

The  Aristocracy  of  Land  and  the  Oligarchy  of  Trade  Against  the  Liberty  and  De 
velopment  of  the  Individual. — John  Randolph  on  Manhood  Suffrage. — The 
American  Ideal  of  Decentralization. — Its  Precedents  in  Athens,  Venice  and  in 
England  under  Elizabeth. — New  England  and  Virginia  of  the  Eighteenth  Cen 
tury. — Government  Under  the  Highest  Possible  Civilization. — Government  for 
the  Control  of  the  Producer  by  Distributers  or  Non-Producers. — Its  Operations 
During  a  Century  of  American  Politics. — The  Tu  Quoque  Struggle  Between 
Holders  of  Corporation  Privilege  and  Agricultural  Producers  Using  Slave 
Labor. — From  Benton  and  Jackson  to  General  Benjamin  F.  Butler. — Diversion 
and  Change  of  Subject  in  Politics. 

r|HEN  Mr.  Bland  entered  national  politics  in  i872,  the  issues 
were  essentially  the  same  as  in  1856  when  Benton  was  forced 
out  of  public  life  by  his  defeat  for  the  governorship  of  Mis 
souri.     Civil  war  was  an  episode  involving  no  actual  change  of 
the  enduring  conditions  of  evolution  and  offering  no  real  check  to  the 
always  inherent  and  imminent  tendency  towards  reaction. 

The  Democracy  of  individual  liberty  overthrew  in  Virginia  the 
colonial  aristocracy  for  which  John  Randolph  stood  during  the  third  decade 
of  the  century  when  he  unsuccessfully  opposed  changes  of  the  state  con 
stitution  intended  to  base  government  on  manhood  rights  rather  than  on 
property. 

Randolph  declared  that  with  the  right  of  suffrage  extended  to  all  males 
of  voting  age,  statesmanship  would  become  impossible  and  the  science  of 
government  would  be  reduced  to  keeping  a  tally.  To  this,  those  who  held 
with  Jefferson  replied  that  the  people  of  any  country  must  govern  them 
selves  in  order  to  be  justly  governed  and  that  it  is  always  safer  to  trust 
them  at  their  worst  than  it  is  to  trust  at  their  best  those  who  allege  their 

own  superiority  as  a  title  to  rule  others.     This  declaration  of  principle  nec- 

24 


AN  AMERICAN  COMMONER.  25 

essarily  abolished  slavery  in  the  United  States  by  its  own  force  and  from 
the  Missouri  Compromise  of  1821  to  the  campaign  in  which  the  leaders  of 
the  Abolition  agitation  turned  on  and  denounced  Grant,  events  as  they  were 
developed  by  the  action  and  reaction  of  the  great  forces  of  politics,  merely 
declared  and  demonstrated  what  is  now  obvious  as  from  the  first  a  tore- 
gone  conclusion. 

The  Jeffersonian  ideal  was  one  of  the  largest  possible  individual  lib 
erty,  developing  civilization  through  such  "local  self-government"  as  that 
of  Athens  in  the  time  of  Pericles,  Venice  under  the  Doges  and  England  in 
the  time  of  Shakespeare.  Those  who  held  the  ideal  represented  by  Jeffer 
son  wished  to  see  in  the  world  the  largest  possible  number  of  independent 
and  sovereign  states,  living  together  in  peace,  trading  together  without 
restriction,  developing  through  gradual  improvement,  each  its  own  remedy 
for  its  own  abuses,  and  evolving  each  its  own  literature,  its  own  art,  its 
own  science,  controlled  only  by  the  moral  and  intellectual  unities  of  the 
highest  possible  freedom  under  the  highest  possible  civilization.  They 
dreamed  of  leagues  between  such  sovereign  states  for  common  defense  and 
only  for  common  convenience.  Standing  armies  were  to  be  abolished  and 
all  the  machinery  of  coercive  militarism  was  to  be  made  obsolete  by  the 
increasing  willingness  of  men,  themselves  free,  to  concede  to  all  others  the 
full  measure  of  self-government  they  claimed  for  themselves.  Individual 
evolution,  local  development,  non-intervention,  the  least  possible  force  at 
home,  the  closest  possible  approach  to  the  absolute  zero  of  violence  abroad 
— all  this  was  hoped  for  as  a  result  of  the  American  civilization  which  was 
to  be  developed  by  individual  liberty,  local  self-government  and  a  federal 
government  acting  only  as  a  "department  of  foreign  affairs."  The  incom 
patibility  between  such  a  theory  and  the  fact  of  slavery  was  probably 
clearer  to  Jefferson  himself  than  to  almost  any  one  else  in  his  generation, 
but  he  hoped  that  under  liberty,  the  slow  growth  of  intellectual  and  moral 
self-consciousness  would  be  the  sufficient — as  he  believed  it  to  be  the  only 
effectual. — remedy  for  wrongs  due  to  a  lack  of  development. 


26  AN  AMERICAN  COMMONER. 

From  the  presidential  campaign  of  1800,  when  the  Federalist  party 
was  disorganized  by  Jefferson's  impetuous  attack,  until  1899,  when  Bland 
made  his  last  protest  against  the  same  Federalism  as  it  was  evoked  and 
made  potent  by  the  military  ardor  resulting  from  the  war  with  Spain,  the 
modes  of  merely  negative  politics  in  the  United  States  have  been  charac 
terized  by  the  utmost  simplicity,  strictly  parallel  with  the  simplicity  which 
underlies  the  apparent  complexity  of  political  economy. 

The  producer  can  be  controlled  (i)  by  the  control  of  his  person;  (2) 
by  the  direct  control  of  his  product;  (3)  by  the  control  of  the  medium  used 
in  exchanging  his  product.  The  first  method  is  that  of  primitive  and 
savage  times.  It  has  never  been  economically  efficient  nor  reliably  re 
munerative.  The  second  belongs  to  advancing  civilization  and  the  third 
is  most  effectively  operative  only  where  the  intelligence  of  selfishness  has 
received  its  highest  possible  training. 

In  American  politics  from  1800  to  1860,  every  attack  from  the  south 
ern  states  on  the  rapid  development  of  northern  corporations,  seeking 
grants  of  sovereignty  or  landowning  privilege  from  state  or  federal  gov 
ernments,  was  answered  by  a  counter  attack  on  slavery.  From  1866,  when 
Andrew  Johnson  was  impeached,  until  the  closing  year  of  the  nineteenth 
century,  the  presence  of  the  lately  enfranchised  slaves  and  their  descend 
ants  at  the  south  made  inevitable  the  perpetuation  of  the  same  methods. 

The  first  issues  were  joined  when  Jefferson  attacked  the  advocates  of 
a  permanent  national  debt  and  denounced  the  issue  and  control  of  currency 
in  any  form  by  private  corporations.  He  himself  foresaw  the  Civil  war 
only  in  1820,  when  the  issues  were  defined  unmistakably  by  the  struggle 
over  the  admission  of  Missouri,  but  he  had  long  ago  made  such  results 
inevitable  when,  supported  in  his  theories  of  absolute  liberty  and  justice 
chiefly  by  the  hereditary  landowners  and  slaveholders  of  the  south,  whom 
he  himself  had  crippled  politically,  he  forced  a  radical  issue  with  the  banks 
and  manufacturing  corporations  of  the  northeast. 


AN  AMERICAN  COMMONER.  27 

Conservative  as  he  was  in  his  methods ;  anxious  as  he  was  to  postpone 
every  crisis;  clearly  as  he  saw  that  the  success  of  every  attempt  at  liberty 
must  depend  on  the  slow  development  of  a  more  nearly  perfect  popular  ap 
preciation  of  justice,  he  could  hardly  have  done  less  than  he  did  in  chal 
lenging  with  the  banks  of  issue  the  bitter  and  prolonged  contest  which  did 
not  end,  but  simply  developed  a  new  phase  when  Benton  was  defeated  for 
governor  of  Missouri  in  1856 — which,  indeed,  was  as  far  as  ever  from 
ending  in  1898  when  Bland  gathered  together  the  slight  remaining  forces 
of  his  fast  waning  vitality  to  protest  against  the  leadership  of  those  who 
wished  to  initiate  "occupation  by  force  of  arms"  as  a  mode  of  government 
abroad,  the  better  to  perpetuate  at  home  that  system  of  exercising  dele 
gated  sovereignty  through  corporation  boards,  against  which  Jefferson  had 
planned  and  Jackson  had  fulminated. 

When  in  a  letter  to  Robert  Morris,  Hamilton  had  declared  that  "a 
national  debt  if  not  excessive  will  be  to  us  a  national  blessing,"  he  had  sug 
gested  the  corner-stone  of  the  magnificent  structure  of  commercial  and 
financial  organization  which  in  the  nineteenth  century  was  to  exercise  a 
power  in  centralizing  wealth  and  perpetuating  it  in  the  control  of  family 
and  class,  greater  than  primogeniture  and  entail  had  even  approximated 
through  class  and  clan  ownership  in  the  middle  ages. 

Politically  an  evolutionist  before  Herbert  Spencer,  a  non-intervention 
ist  before  Bright,  a  free-trader  before  Cobden,  Jefferson  himself  invoked 
the  forces  which  were  to  defeat,  at  least  in  the  politics  of  phenomenon 
during  the  nineteenth  century,  the  brilliant  promise  of  the  Republicanism 
of  the  eighteenth.  Ready  at  all  times  to  make  practical  compromises  in 
mere  detail,  and  working  methodically  to  postpone  every  threatening  crisis, 
Jefferson,  before  his  own  election  to  the  presidency,  made  no  compromises 
of  principle.  He  attacked  the  intrenched  commercial  feudalism  which 
characterized  Pennsylvania,  New  York  and  New  England  as  strongly  as 
he  did  the  baronial  agricultural  system  of  colonial  Virginia.  The  result 
was  far-reaching. 


28  AN  AMERICAN   COMMONER. 

With  the  abolition  of  entail  and  of  primogeniture  as  principles  in  the 
transmission  of  land  from  one  generation  to  another,  slavery  in  the  agri 
cultural  system  of  the  southern  states  remained  as  the  only  obvious  mani 
festation  of  incompatibility  between  existing  conditions  and  Jeffersonian 
ideals.  But  for  America,  as  for  any  other  country  of  the  world,  such  a 
standard  is  only  to  be  realized  even  approximately  by  the  slow  and  painful 
processes  of  repeated  failure  to  be  justified  when  measured  against  it.  At 
tacking  landed  feudalism  at  the  south  and  securing  the  general  acceptance 
of  his  theories  of  landholding,  Jefferson  overthrew  the  decadent  system  of 
agricultural  feudalism  chiefly  through  the  force  of  the  reaction  of  his  un 
successful  attack  on  what  under  the  influence  of  steam,  was  to  become  the 
characteristic  mode  through  which  nineteenth  century  resistance  to  his 
ideals  expressed  itself. 

It  must  have  been  as  obvious  to  Jefferson  as  it  is  now  that  govern 
ment  or  corporation  securities  representing  permanent  interest-bearing 
debts  are  a  means  of  transmitting  wealth,  and  of  founding  and  perpetuat 
ing  governing  families  and  classes,  compared  to  which  the  power  to  entail 
land  and  to  transmit  it  only  to  the  eldest  son  was  a  mere  clumsy  device  of 
semi-civilization. 

Not  willing  that  the  sacrifice  of  the  colonial  aristocracy  of  Virginia 
should  be  made  in  vain,  Jefferson  attacked  the  extension  of  corporation 
privilege  at  all  points.  In  a  letter  to  Albert  Gallatin  in  1803,  he  declared 
the  Bank  of  the  United  States  as  a  bank  of  issue  an  institution  "of  the  most 
deadly  hostility  existing  against  the  principles  and  form  of  our  constitu 
tion."  Instead  of  the  notes  of  the  bank,  he  proposed,  so  long  as  paper 
money  was  necessary  and  unavoidable,  "letting  the  treasurer  give  his  draft 
or  note  for  payment  at  any  particular  place,  which  in  a  well  conducted  gov 
ernment,  ought  to  have  as  much  credit  as  any  private  draft  or  bank  note." 

Writing  to  Gallatin  again  in  1809,  he  declared  that  the  success  of  the 
attempt  to  increase  the  national  debt  to  its  former  size  would  "commit  the 
country  to  the  English  career  of  debt,  corruption  and  rottenness,  closing 
with  revolution." 


AN  AMERICAN  COMMONER.  29 

In  such  expressions  as  these,  he  defines  the  essential  issues  of  the 
politics  of  a  century.  From  time  to  time  the  issue  shifted  until  the  privi 
leges  of  manufacturing  corporations,  claiming  protection  under  a  tariff 
levied  to  prevent  competition,  were  the  chief  point  of  attack,  but  politics  in 
America  have  only  become  desperate  and  full  of  the  threat  of  revolution 
when  there  has  been  a  really  radical  issue  on  the  question  of  issuing  and 
controlling  the  money  supply. 

As  Jefferson  defined  the  issue  against  the  control  of  the  .producing 
classes  by  banks  of  issue  and  holders  of  certificates  of  national  and  other 
indebtedness,  the  agricultural  producers  of  the  country,  especially  of  the 
southern  states,  responded  with  enthusiasm,  while  the  already  great  and 
rapidly  growing  financial  and  commercial  organizations  of  the  northeast 
retaliated  by  formidable  attacks  on  slavery.  Wilberforce  had  already  de 
fined  the  issue  in  England  as  Jefferson  himself  had  defined  it  in  America. 
The  attempt  at  emancipation  and  colonization,  made  by  the  followers  of 
Jefferson  at  the  south,  might  have  succeeded  but  for  the  hostility  incident 
to  growing  sectionalism  and  the  widely  divergent  institutions  of  the  north 
and  south.  As  it  was,  every  attack  made  by  southern  idealists  and  phi 
lanthropists  on  the  growing  abuses  of  the  corporation  system  at  the  north, 
increased  the  facilities  of  expression  for  philanthropic  zeal  in  behalf  of  the 
immediate  abolition  of  slavery.  It  is  impossible  to  conceive  that  any  one 
impelled  by  the  forces  of  sectionalism  governing  our  politics  from  1800 
to  1860,  should  have  been  fully  conscious  of  their  realities.  On  each  side 
earnest  and  intelligent  men  followed  the  line  of  least  resistance  in  attempt 
ing  to  make  effective  their  hope  of  improving  the  world.  In  1820,  when 
Missouri  applied  for  admission  to  the  Union,  it  was  as  easy  for  Tennes- 
seeans  to  oppose  the  evils  of  corporation  control  in  Massachusetts  as  it  was 
for  Massachusetts  reformers  to  see  the  evils  of  slavery  in  Tennessee.  But 
even  at  a  period  so  remote  as  that  at  which  Benton  and  Jackson  had  their 
street  duel,  it  was  one  thing  to  recognize  the  crying  nature  of  an  evil  at 
home  and  quite  another  thing  to  find  means  of  protesting  easily  and  effect 
ively.  The  deepest  secret  of  the  practical  politics  of  sectionalism  in  America 


30  AN  AMERICAN   COMMONER. 

has  lain  in  giving  or  withholding  from  disinterested  philanthropy  the  facili 
ties  it  must  have  before  it  can  nationalize  its  influence.  Thus  for  twenty 
years  after  the  Civil  war,  the  managers  of  the  republican  party  whose 
principles  tended  strongly  to  favor  the  suppression  of  the  sale  of  intoxi 
cants,  used  their  utmost  skill  in  attempting  to  deny  adequate  expression  to 
prohibition  sentiment,  while  democratic  managers,  bound  by  party  principle 
to  oppose  prohibition,  really  did  everything  possible  to  keep  the  sentiment 
alive  and  to  give  it  effectiveness  in  republican  states — especially  in  New 
York  and  Indiana  where  the  presidential  elections  of  more  than  a  decade 
appeared  to  depend  on  it. 

By  the  same  rule  when  Benton  began  his  attack  on  the  United  States 
bank,  northern  philanthropy  began  to  find  more  adequate  and  convenient 
means  of  expressing  what  was  essentially  a  just  objection  to  the  perpetua 
tion  of  slavery;  and  as  issues  were  more  sharply  defined  against  oligarchic 
control  of  money  and  supply  through  the  abuse  of  the  corporation  system, 
the  demand  for  the  abolition  of  slavery,  without  regard  to  the  convenience 
of  the  slave-owner  became  more  insistent  and  more  fierce. 

Conditions  had  not  changed  in  1873,  when  Mr.  Bland  first  took  his 
seat  in  Congress.  The  visible  issue  in  national  politics  was  about  to  shift 
to  the  control  of  money  and  commodity  supply,  with  the  certainty  that  ag 
ricultural  producers  in  the  western  as  well  as  in  the  southern  states,  would 
again  unite  as  they  had  done  under  the  leadership  of  Jackson  and  Benton. 
With  a  skill  and  persistence,  impossible  for  a  man  of  less  acute,  active  and 
unrestrained  intellect,  General  Benjamin  F.  Butler,  on  behalf  of  the  or 
ganized  capital  of  the  country,  parried  by  forcing  issues  on  the  Civil  Rights 
bill  and  Federal  control  of  southern  elections. 

It  is  said  that  a  blacksmith  once,  when  asked  why  he  had  tied  a  small 
cord  on  the  upper  lip  of  a  horse  he  was  about  to  shoe,  replied  that  he  wished 
to  "give  him  something  else  to  think  about," 

The  history  of  all  that  is  most  hostile  to  American  progress  has  been 
made  through  the  application  of  not  wholly  dissimilar  devices  for  creating 
a  diversion  or  changing  the  subject. 


CHAPTER  IV. 

Moral  Insanity  and  Intellectual  Disturbance  on  the  Battle  Field  and  in  Politics. — 
The  Spirit  of  Civilization  and  the  Theory  that  Trade  is  War.— The  American 
Idea  of  the  Last  Quarter  of  the  Eighteenth  Century  as  it  Inspired  Europe  in 
1848.  The  Rally  of  Toryism  and  the  Coup  d'Etat.— The  Crimean  War  and  the 
Growth  of  Reaction — D'Israeli  and  the  Dealers  in  War  Debts. — Growth  of  Im 
perialism  From  the  Coup  d'Etat  to  the  End  of  the  Century. — Hedonism  of  the 
Militant  and  Speculative  Classes. — Eland's  Higher  Education. 


HE  CIVIL  war  was  a  moral  insanity  manifesting  itself  through 
deep-seated  intellectual  disturbance  and  perpetuating  it.  Act 
ual  and  organized  violence  ceased  with,  the  surrender  at  Appo- 
mattox,  but  the  moral  and  intellectual  realities  of  Civil  war 
conditions  did  not.  The  politics  of  the  generation  which  fought  the  war 
were  inspired  by  the  same  spirit  and  directed  by  the  same  intellectual 
processes  which  kept  the  armies  in  the  field  and  governed  their  operations. 
The  spirit  of  civilization  consists  fundamentally  in  a  desire  to  extend 
to  all  others  the  advantages  we  ourselves  enjoy.  The  spirit  of  reaction  to 
wards  primitive  racial  conditions  shows  itself  in  a  determination  to  take 
and  keep  every  possible  advantage.  Wherever  this  spirit  gains  sufficient 
strength  to  control  the  intellectual  modes  of  an  individual  or  national  in 
tellect,  we  have  in  political  economy,  the  practical  application  of  the  theory 
that  "trade  is  war"  and,  as  it  is  presumed  to  mean  taking  the  largest 
possible  advantage  of  everyone  else,  that  the  largest  possible  armies  and 
navies  are  necessary  for  its  extension. 

The  reaction  towards  this  crude  and  undeveloped  mode  of  thought 
manifested  itself  strongly  among  the  hereditary  aristocracy  and  financiers 
of  Europe  immediately  after  the  failure  of  the  German  revolution  of  1848. 
That  hopeful  movement  for  constitutional  government  deeply  influenced 
France,  Spain,  Italy  and  Hungary.  One  immediate  and  notable  result  was 
the  great  increase  in  the  population  of  the  United  States,  due  to  the  emigra- 


32  AN  AMERICAN  COMMONER. 

tion  of  European  constitutionalists.  Our  period  of  greatest  national 
growth  dates  from  the  temporary  failure  of  European  admirers  of  our 
eighteenth  century  institutions  to  establish  them  in  Europe  at  a  time  when 
this  country  itself  was  about  to  undergo  its  strongest  reaction  from  them. 
This  movement  in  Europe — the  direct  result  of  the  American  spirit  of  the 
eighteenth  century,  was  destined  to  be  one  of  the  decisive  factors  in  per 
petuating  our  possibilities  of  progress,  in  spite  of  the  destructiveness  of  the 
spirit  which  governed  our  national  life  during  the  Civil  war  generation. 
Mazzini,  Garibaldi,  Cavour,  Hecker,  Castelar,  and  Kossuth  were  intellect 
ually  as  truly  Americans  of  the  last  quarter  of  the  eighteenth  century — the 
golden  age  of  Americanism — as  were  Washington,  Franklin,  Samuel  Ad 
ams,  Madison  and  Jefferson.  It  was  most  fitting  that  America  should  be 
come  the  heir  of  all  they  had  failed  to  do  for  Europe  and  that  their  work, 
in  a  generation  when  the  hand  of  every  American  was  against  every  other, 
should  have  done  so  much  to  perpetuate  those  high  results  of  civilizing 
ideals  which  might  otherwise  have  been  lost  to  us  during  the  dominance  of 
the  idea  that  the  greatest  man  is  he  who  in  war,  politics,  or  business  can 
take  the  largest  possible  advantage  of  the  largest  possible  number  of  people. 

This  idea  which  moves  the  primitive  statesman  and  financier  of  Poly 
nesia  to  insert  a  fishbone  in  the  gristle  of  his  nose  and  to  tattoo  the  star  of 
an  order  of  merit  on  his  breast  to  indicate  the  number  of  his  fellows  he  has 
killed  and  eaten,  gained  such  strength  among  European  military  and  aristo 
cratic  orders,  as  well  as  among  the  financial  and  speculative  classes  in 
1848-49,  that  the  Coup  d'Etat  of  Louis  Napoleon  was  welcomed  as  the 
presage  of  a  new  millennium  of  world-wide  reaction.  It  was  followed  by 
the  Crimean  war  of  1853-  56,  forced  by  the  same  class  in  order  to  revive 
the  spirit  through  which  alone  it  is  possible  for  any  class  to  perpetuate 
itself  without  giving  a  fair  and  full  return  for  all  it  receives  from  co-oper 
ative  society. 

Our  own  Civil  war  and  the  political  period  which  followed  it  were  a 
part  of  the  same  reaction  which  reached  its  apparent  climax  in  Europe  in 


THE  CAPITOL. 


CONGRESSIONAL  LIBRARY. 


THE  HALL  OF  REPRESENTATIVES. 


AN  AMERICAN  COMMONER.  33 

1888,  when  Bismarck  carried  through  the  Army  bill  and  made  permanent 
for  the  rest  of  the  nineteenth  century  the  condition  of  the  Coup  d'Etat,  the 
Crimean  war,  the  Civil  war  in  America  and  the  Franco-Prussian  war  in 
Europe. 

All  these  apparently  disconnected  events  were  a  part  of  the  same  move 
ment.  As  a  result  of  it  the  hereditary  aristocratic  "whig"  or  liberal  ele 
ment  of  England,  represented  in  the  eighteenth  century  by  such  men  as 
Chatham  and  Burke,  gave  place  in  the  control  of  English  politics  to  men 
representing  the  new  feudalism  of  the  financial  and  commercial  corpora 
tion — chiefly  to  the  holders  of  British  and  other  war  debts.  The  shrewd 
ness,  the  indirection  and  the  unrestrained  desire  to  take  all  possible  advant 
age  of  everyone,  represented  by  the  statesmanship  of  D'Israeli  and  his 
principals,  became  thus  the  governing  factor  in  the  international  move 
ment  of  the  last  quarter  of  the  nineteenth  century  and,  as  a  result  of  it,  the 
century  closed  with  a  period  of  world-wide,  if  necessarily  transitory  reac 
tion. 

That  this  spirit  with  its  results  was  the  governing  spirit  of  the  world 
in  the  last  half  of  the  nineteenth  century  is  not  to  be  believed.  It  was 
merely  the  dominating  spirit  of  politics;  and  even  in  politics— which  is 
nothing  more  nor  less  than  the  struggle  to  gain  possession  of  the  police 
and  military  power  of  organized  society — it  was  stoutly  resisted  and 
measurably  held  in  check.  If  at  every  forward  step  of  its  advance,  plu 
tocratic  Toryism  found  a  hundred  traitors  ready  to  sell  the  ideals  they  pro 
fessed,  it  never  failed  to  find,  guarding  the  Thermopylae  passes  of  the 
world's  future,  men  of  simple  lives  and  steady  purpose,  who  if  they  were 
only  partly  conscious  of  the  sublimity  of  the  contest  and  of  their  own 
part  in  it,  were  accustomed  to  do  their  duty  first  and  to  think  of  the  conse 
quences  to  themselves  afterwards.  Such  a  man  was  Mazzini  in  Europe 
Such  a  man  was  Bland  in  America. 

We  are  now  about  to  examine  into  the  processes  of  growth  by  which 
such  men  become  fitted  for  work  which  few  in  their  generations  under- 

3 


34  AN    AMERICAN    COMMONER. 

stand — of  which  they  themselves  are  conscious  rather  in  the  rectitude  of 
their  purposes  than  in  the  adequate  conception  of  the  results  necessarily 
proceeding  from  it. 

Civilization  in  the  United  States  and  in  the  world  at  large  is  indebted 
to  Mr.  Bland  chiefly  for  his  work  in  forcing  a  complete  revolution  in  the 
"practical  politics"  of  the  United  States  involving  the  abandonment  of  the 
issues  of  Civil  war  and  such  a  realignment  of  American  parties  as  will 
finally  result  in  checking  the  Tory  reaction  in  Europe  forced  by  Louis 
Napoleon,  Disraeli  and  Bismarck  as  representatives  of  universal  coercion. 

Representing  in  political  economy  the  fundamental  rectitude  of  the 
idea  that  coercive  government  should  interfere  as  little  as  possible  with 
trade  (exchange  and  the  medium  of  exchange)  Mr.  Bland  was  inspired  in 
all  his  work  as  a  political  economist  by  a  governing  belief  that  all  men 
ought  to  be  free  and  that  the  largest  possible  liberty  necessarily  involves 
and  produces  the  highest  possible  civilization. 

The  saying  of  Sterne  that  a  bad  life  and  a  good  belief  are  troublesome 
neighbors  which  must  finally  part  company  if  only  for  quietness'  sake,  ap 
plies  in  politics  as  fully  as  it  does  in  religion.  The  man  whose  political 
principles  are  not  inherently  a  part  of  his  own  nature,  will  repudiate  them 
with  that  facile  unscrupulousness,  which  but  for  the  simplicity  and  direct 
ness  of  such  uncorrupted  Americanism  as  was  represented  by  Mr.  Bland, 
would  be  the  most  striking  characteristic  of  American  politics. 

It  is  because  Mr.  Eland's  public  life  was  so  completely  a  product  of 
evolution ;  because  he  was  so  thoroughly  what  he  professed  to  be ;  so  char 
acteristically  and  essentially  a  representative  of  the  American  life  which  at 
last  will  control  the  future,  that  he  has  an  importance  to  the  student  of 
history  not  surpassed  by  that  of  any  representative  man  of  his  generation 
in  Europe  or  America. 

During  the  last  quarter  of  the  century  the  new  name  of  "Hedonism" 
came  to  be  applied  to  an  old  mode  of  life  and  intellectual  sensation — using 
that  awkward  phrase  as  more  accurate  in  such  a  connection  than  "thought." 


AN  AMERICAN  COMMONER.  35 

The  worship  of  comfort  as  the  supreme  good,  whether  it  be  professed  or 
merely  practiced  without  profession,  produces  in  political  and  social  life 
the  conditions  against  which  Mr.  Eland's  life  was  a  persistent  struggle. 
For  this  struggle  which  made  him  one  of  the  chief  factors  in  the  progress 
of  the  twentieth  century,  he  was  fitted  by  an  education,  moral  and  intel 
lectual,  which  made  him  in  everything  the  simple  reality  of  what  he  ap 
peared  to  be.  He  was  born  on  a  Kentucky  farm  which  after  his  father's 
death  sold  for  only  a  few  hundred  dollars.  But  seven  years  old  when  his 
father  died,  he  soon  took  his  place  at  the  plow,  helping  to  till  the  farm  for 
his  widowed  mother  and  working  on  neighboring  farms  for  six  and  seven 
dollars  a  month,  schooling  himself,  undergoing  all  possible  hardships  of  life 
and  taking  them  as  a  matter  of  course,  without  complaint  and  without  dis 
couragement.  If  he  had  by  heredity  the  traits  of  the  colonial  aristocracy 
from  which  he  was  descended,  he  had  by  assimilation  the  simpler,  stronger, 
sublimer  life  of  the  everyday  American  who,  in  a  country  where  it  is  in 
tended  that  it  shall  never  be  more  than  "three  generations  from  shirt 
sleeves  to  shirt-sleeves/'  is  finally  to  possess  the  earth  by  virtue  of  the  same 
fitness  into  which  Bland  was  thus  educated.  Some  idea  of  what  his  educa 
tion  meant  in  detail,  may  be  gained  from  incidents  of  his  life  in  the  mining 
regions  of  California  and  Nevada,  where  he  went  when  not  quite  twenty- 
one  years  of  age.* 


*As  the  study  of  Mr.  Eland's  relations  to  his  times  and  to  the  meaning  of  the  present  and  future 
will  take  precedence  of  further  consideration  of  his  private  life,  the  reader  will  find  useful  for  reference 
in  ensuing  chapters,  the  following  chronological  summary,  revised  from  a  published  sketch  prepared 
from  facts  supplied  by  Mr.  Eland's  family  during  his  lifetime. 

1835-72— Richard  Parks  Bland  was  born  in  Ohio  county,  Kentucky,  August  19,  1835.  His  father 
was  Stouten  Edward  Bland,  a  native  Kentuckian;  his  mother  was  Margaret,  a  daughter  of  Richard 
Parks  Nail,  of  Kentucky.  The  Elands  were  among  the  earliest  settlers  in  Kentucky.  The  family  mostly 
sprung  from  Col.  Theodoric  Bland,  who  was  on  Washington's  Staff  in  the  Revolutionary  war. 
Mr.  -Eland's  father  was  educated  for  a  Presbyterian  minister,  but  owing  to  poor  health,  became  a  far 
mer,  and  was  a  farmer  when  he  died  in  1842.  His  mother  died  seven  years  later  in  Kentucky.  There  was 
no  patrimony  left  to  the  family,  and  young  Bland  worked  during  the  summer  for  six  and  seven  dollars  a 
month  to  procure  the  means  to  school  himself  during  the  winter.  At  the  age  of  eighteen  he  attended  the 
Hartford,  Kentucky,  Academy  and  took  a  teacher's  course  one  year.  He  taught  two  terms  of  school  in  Ohio 
county,  Kentucky,  one  term  in  Wayne  county,  Missouri,  and  in  1855  went  to  California.  He  remained  in 
California,  Nevada  and  Colorado  ten  years,  teaching  school  and  studying  and  practicing  law,  and  serving 


36  AN  AMERICAN   COMMONER. 

"While  out  west,  Mr.  Bland  had  many  tips  and  downs,"  Mrs.  Bland 
writes  in  her  reminiscences  of  him.  "At  one  time  he  was  very  ill  at  the 
mines  and  after  using  all  his  money  before  recovery,  was  obliged  to  return 
to  San  Francisco.  He  walked  all  the  way  from  the  mines  and  had  a  re 
lapse  as  a  result  of  going  out  too  soon.  He  once  told  me  that  the  reason 
he  never  learned  to  play  cards  was  because  he  got  so  disgusted  with  card- 
playing  out  west.  He  said  there  was  so  much  fighting  and  killing  over 
cards  that  he  never  wanted  to  learn.  He  also  said  that  a  man  was  obliged 
fo  defend  himself  or  he  would  be  thought  cowardly  and  killed.  He  added 
that  when  the  bullies  at  the  mines  found  out  he  would  not  drink  and  play 
cards,  they  tried  to  whip  him  but  could  not,  as  he  could  pick  up  and  haul  out 
heavier  loads  from  the  shafts  than  any  other  man  in  the  mines.  He  worked 
in  the  shaft,  taking  shifts  and  often  working  all  day  or  night  standing  in 
water  up  to  his  waist.  He  often  talked  of  his  skill  in  cooking  gained  at  the 
mines,  saying  he  could  boil  potatoes  and  make  bean  soup  better  than  any 
of  us." 

Before  going  to  California,  Mr.  Bland  had  taught  school  in  Wayne 
county,  Missouri,  where  he  went  from  Kentucky  in  1854.  In  Wayne 
county  he  made  his  home  with  his  aunt,  the  wife  of  Robert  Fulton  with 


one  term  as  treasurer  of  Carson  county,  Utah,  now  the  state  of  Colorado,  While  teaching  school  he  pur 
sued  and  completed  his  law  studies  in  the  law  office  of  R.  B.  Mayes,  in  Nevada  county,  California,  now 
the  state  of  Nevada.  In  1860  he  was  admitted  in  the  United  States  District  Court  in  Utah  territory.  Re 
turning  to  Missouri,  in  1867,  he  resumed  the  practice  of  law  at  Rolla,  Missouri,  where  he  remained  three 
years.  Then  he  moved  to  Lebanon,  Missouri.  In  1873  he  married  Miss  Virginia  Elizabeth  Mitchell,  daugh 
ter  of  General  E.  Y.  Mitchell,  of  Rolla,  Missouri.  He  left  six  living  children,  four  boys  and  two  girls. 

1872-76— In  1872  Mr.  Bland,  nominated  by  the  Democrats  for  Congress  in  the  Fifth  Missouri  Dis 
trict  during  the  Grant-Greeley  campaign,  was  elected  to  the  Forty-third  Congress  by  800  majority  over 
Col.  A.  J.  Seay,  Republican.  Mr.  Blaine  was  Speaker  of  the  House  of  Representatives  in  the  Forty- 
third  Congress.  During  the  discussion  of  the  currency  question'at  this  time  Mr.  Bland  spoke  in  advocacy 
of  the  bill  to  increase  the  greenback  circulation,  and  in  opposition  to  the  system  of  national  banks.  It 
was  during  this  (the  Forty-third  Congress)  that  the  historic  filibustering  scene  occurred,  led  by  Randall, 
for  the  purpose  of  defeating  the  "Force  Bill."  In  this  Mr.  Bland  took  an  active  part,  and  with  his  demo 
cratic  colleagues  remained  in  the  House  in  continuous  session  for  more  than  sixty  hours.  He  was  re- 
elected  to  the  Forty-fourth  Congress.  It  was  during  this  Congress  that  the  discovery  was  made  of  the 
act  demonetizing  silver.  Mr.  Bland  was  chairman  of  the  Committee  of  Mines  and  Mining,  and  re 
ported  from  that  committee  the  first  bill  lor  the  free  coinage  of  silver  that  had  been  reported  after  its  de 
monetization.  This  bill  was  "filibustered"  in  the  House  of  Representatives  for  nearly  three  months,  and 
in  that  way  its  consideration  was  prevented  in  the  first  session.  On  the  re-assembling  of  the  Forty- 


AN  AMERICAN  COMMONER.  37 

whose  family  and  Mr.  Fulton's  nephew,  Mr.  John  R.  Patterson,  now  of 
Pattersonville,  Missouri,  he  went  to  California,  where  he  gained  so  much 
of  the  experience  which  was  to  identify  him  with  the  developing  life  of  his 
country.  Of  this  period  of  his  life  Mr.  Patterson  writes : 

"On  November  14,  1855,  Robert  Fulton  with  his  family,  Mr.  Bland 
and  myself,  left  Wayne  county  for  California,  via  New  Orleans  and  the 
Nicaragua  route,  landing  in  California  about  the  middle  of  December  fol 
lowing.  Mr.  Bland  and  myself  went  to  what  were  known  as  "the  middle 
mines,"  camping  there  together  through  the  winter,  doing  our  own  cooking, 
washing  and  mending.  We  used  prepared  flour,  branded  on  the  sack 
"Self-rising,"  and  after  emptying  the  sacks,  we  used  them  for  patching  our 
mining  clothes — always  turning  the  lettered  side  with  the  words  "Self- 
rising"  outward  so  that  it  would  show  on  the  patch.  In  the  spring  of  1856 
Mr.  Bland  went  to  the  northern  mines  and  remained  there  for  some  time. 
When  the  silver  excitement  broke  out  in  Nevada,  he  went  to  that  country, 
locating  at  Virginia  City.  While  working  in  the  mines,  he  studied  law 
and  began  practice  while  in  Nevada,  chiefly  in  Virginia  and  Carson  Cities. 
As  the  result  of  severe  sickness,  he  was  obliged  to  go  to  California  for  his 
health  and  though  he  returned  to  Nevada  after  recuperating,  it  was  not 
long  afterwards  that  he  left  the  Pacific  coast  for  Missouri.  I  write  hoping 
these  facts  of  his  life  in  the  west  may  help  towards  a  better  understanding 
of  a  man  who  was  surely  "self-rising" — the  Commoner  who  as  he  climbed 


fourth  Congress  he  again  brought  up  the  bill,  and  it  passed  the  House  by  a  two-thirds  majority,  but 
was  never  considered  in  the  Senate.  During  this  Congress  (the  Forty-fourth)  the  Silver  Commission  was 
authorized  by  an  act  of  Congress.  On  the  part  of  the  Senate  there  were  appointed  on  this  commission 
Senators  Jones  of  Nevada,  Boutweil  of  Massachusetts,  and  Bogy  of  Missouri;  on  the  part  of  the  House 
Gibson  of  Louisiana,  Willard  of  Michigan,  and  Mr.  Bland.  This  committee  made  the  "Silver  Commis 
sion  Report." 

18T7-9— Mr.  Bland  was  re-elected  to  the  forty-fifth  Congress.  Mr.  Hayes  was  inaugurated  Presi 
dent,  and  called  an  extra  session  of  the  Forty-fifth  Congress,  which  met  November  18,  1877.  Some  two 
weeks  after  the  meeting  of  this  Congress,  Mr.  Bland  introduced  a  bill  which,  amended  in  the  Republi 
can  Senate  and  passed,  is  known  as  the  Bland-Allison  act. 

1879-81 — During  the  Forty-sixth  Congress  the  questions  relating  to  "Troops  at  the  Polls  and  Re 
duction  of  the  Tariff"  were  most  prominent.  Mr.  Bland  took  an  active  part  in  opposition  to  interference 
with  local  self-government;  and  in  advocacy  of  reduction  of  tariff  taxation. 

1881-3 — In  the  Forty-seventh  Congress  (Republican)  the  tariff  question  and  the  question  of  re- 
chartering  the  National  banks  were  most  prominent.  Mr.  Bland  spoke  in  favor  of  immediate  tariff  re 
form  and  against  the  bill  providing  for  the  re-charter  of  National  banks. 

1883-5 — In  the  Forty-eighth  Congress  Mr.  Carlisle  was  Speaker  of  the  House  of  Representatives, 
and  had  been  elected  as  such  upon  the  tariff  issue  against  Mr.  Randall.  Mr.  Bland  took  an  an  active 
part  in  the  support  of  the  Morrison  bill,  reducing  tariff  taxation. 


38  AN  AMERICAN  COMMONER. 

the  hill  of  life  gained  steadfast  footing  at  every  advance." 

It  is  worth  while  to  emphasize  here  the  fact  that  the  quiet  humor  which 
governed  Mr.  Bland  when  as  a  very  young  man,  he  patched  his  mining 
overalls  with  the  "self-rising"  brand  of  the  flour  sack  outwards,  never  left 
him.  Fanaticism  and  humor  are  incompatible.  The  man  who  can  work 
all  night,  standing  in  water  up  to  his  waist  in  the  accomplishment  of  his 
life-purposes,  may  appear  fanatical  to  those  who  believe  that  their  own 
special  comfort  is  the  special  object  of  the  universe,  but  the  steadiness  of 
purpose  which  comes  of  such  high  education  may  be  accompanied  by  the 
utmost  reasonableness  and  gentleness.  When  in  Nevada  in  1860,  the  Piute 
Indians  raided  the  settlements  and  carried  off  a  number  of  prisoners,  Mr. 
Bland  was  one  of  the  rescuing  party.  As  they  pursued  they  were  shocked 
and  exasperated  to  find  along  the  trail  the  mangled  remains  of  prisoners, 
butchered  by  the  Indians.  In  the  skirmish  which  followed  when  the 
Piutes  were  overtaken,  Mr.  Bland  "fired  at  an  Indian  and  saw  him  fall," 
but  this  experience  was  so  far  from  giving  him  the  militant  spirit 
that  it  remained  in  his  mind  only  as  material  for  amusing  children — 
of  whom  he  was  always  very  fond.  He  taught  his  own  children  and  his 
favorites  among  other  children  in  the  neighborhood  of  his  home  the  Piute 

1885-9— In  the  Forty-ninth  Congress  an  effort  was  made  to  repeal  the  act  of  1878,  providing  for 
the  coinage  of  silver.  Mr.  Bland  as  chairman  of  the  Committee  on  Coinage,  Weights  and  Measures 
in  opposition  to  this  repeal  bill,  reported  a  bill  for  free  coinage  and  defeated  the  proposition  to  suspend 
the  Bland  Law  of  1878  by  more  than  a  two-thirds  vote.  In  the  Fiftieth  Congress  Mr.  Bland  took  an  ac 
tive  part  in  the  advocacy  of  the  Mills  tariff  bill. 

1889-98 — In  the  Fifty-first  Congress,  the  first  held  after  Mr.  Harrison  became  President,  the 
principal  questions  related  to  the  McKinley  tariff  and  the  Sherman  law.  Mr.  Bland  opposed  the  McKin- 
ley  bill,  and  probably  made  more  speeches  against  it  than  any  other  member  of  the  House  during  its  con 
sideration.  He  offered  a  free  coinage  amendment  to  the  Sherman  bill.  Regarding  the  bill  as  a  make 
shift  and  not  in  harmony  with  the  true  theory  of  bimetallism,  he  voted  against  it. 

In  1893  he  made  the  "Parting  of  the  Ways"  speech  which  was  decisive  in  shaping  the  issues  of 
the  campaign  of  1896.  In  1898  he  led  the  fight  against  imperialism,  subsidies,  a  permanent  national 
debt  and  corporation  control  of  the  currency. 

The  principal  contests  in  which  Mr.  Bland  engaged  during  his  Congressional  career  were  against 
imperialism  in  1872-6;  in  favor  of  the  restoration  of  bimetallism;  in  favor  of  the  freedom  and  equality  of 
the  states  and  of  the  principles  of  individual  liberty;  in  opposition  to  protective  tariffs  and  to  all  forms 
of  protective  taxation;  in  favor  of  facilitating  and  cheapening  distribution  through  the  improvement  of 
interstate  waterways  and  by  checking  railroad  monopolies;  in  opposition  to  the  control  of  the  currency 
by  national  bank  corporations,  and  in  opposition  to  military  garrisons  to  annex  Hawaii,  Puerto  Rico, 
Cuba  and  the  Philippines. 


AN    AMERICAN    COMMONER.  39 

war  dance  and  war  whoop  to  their  great  delight.  "The  Indian  war  dance 
was  a  favorite  pastime  with  the  children,"  writes  Mrs.  Bland.  "In  the 
evening  after  dinner  Mr.  Bland  would  stamp  and  sing  a  kind  of  war  whoop, 
and  the  children  would  dance  as  he  sang.  He  used  to  say  that  when  we 
were  in  rented  rooms  in  Washington,  he  could  not  have  the  war  dance  for 
fear  people  would  think  we  were  crazy.  We  rented  houses  for  about  ten 
years,  however,  and  he  got  so  he  would  not  live  in  rented  rooms.  We  lived 
in  some  very  stuffy,  small  houses  as  rents  were  high  in  Washington,  but 
in  them  he  could  play  with  the  children  as  he  pleased.  He  used  to  get  out 
and  run  races  with  them  and  he  was  never  happier  than  when  on  the  floor 
with  three  or  four  children  climbing  over  him.  They  often  made  so  much 
noise  that  I  would  have  to  go  out  and  leave  them  to  themselves.  He  was 
as  gentle,  kind  and  affectionate  as  any  woman  and  his  love  for  home  was 
so  great  that  except  to  get  his  mail  and  attend  to  absolutely  necessary  busi 
ness  he  hardly  went  to  town  at  all." 

In  illustration  of  the  practical  operations  of  his  natural  kindness,  it 
is  pertinent  to  mention  in  this  connection  that  shortly  after  they  reached 
California,  Mr.  and  Mrs.  Fulton  both  died,  leaving  their  three  small  chil 
dren  orphaned,  with  no  friend  except  Mr.  Bland,  himself  a  friendless  and 
almost  penniless  youth.  He  did  with  all  simplicity  what  it  was  natural  for 
him  to  do  under  the  circumstances,  caring  for  the  orphans,  cooking  for 
them  and  washing  their  clothing  with  his  own  hands.  Some  desirable  lit 
erary  accomplishments  Mr.  Bland  sacrificed  to  the  insistent  demands  of 
education  of  this  kind,  but  the  orphan  boy  of  twenty-one  washing  the  clouts 
of  orphan  children  in  a  western  mining  town  which  had  no  universities,  no 
literary  societies,  no  libraries,  got  nevertheless  that  very  highest  education 
which  is  the  essence  of  all  that  is  great  in  literature  and  in  civilization. 

It  ought  not  to  remain  possible  for  anyone  to  misunderstand  Mr. 
Eland's  methods  and  purposes  when  to  such  suggestions  of  what  he  really 
was  it  is  added  that  in  the  first  great  struggle  against  corporation  control 
of  the  currency  he  showed  the  same  steadiness  of  purpose  he  did  in 


4°  AN  AMERICAN  COMMONER. 

working  in  water  waist-deep  in  western  mines — and  at  greater  cost  to 
himself,  as  in  spite  of  his  robust  constitution,  the  struggle  which  followed 
the  Bland-Allison  act  cost  him  a  hemorrhage  and  a  period  of  subsequent 
prostration  from  which  he  never  recovered. 


CHAPTER  V. 

Expansion  and  Imperialism  under  the  First  Grant  Administration. — A  Strong  Gov 
ernment  with  Imperial  Power  to  Annex  and  Govern  Weaker  Peoples  Proposed 
for  the  United  States  by  International  Financiers. — Their  Objective  Point  the 
Perpetuation  and  Increase  of  the  War  Debt  and  the  Control  of  a  Currency  of 
Corporation  Paper  Based  On  It. — The  Moral  and  Intellectual  Habits  of  General 
Grant. — Weaknesses  Which  He  Struggled  to  Master. — His  Heroism  at  Mount 
MacGregor  Not  Developed  by  the  Politics  of  His  Administration. — General 
Taylor  on  the  Depraved  Morals  Created  by  Civil  War. — The  Constitution  as  a 
Bit  of  Old  Parchment. — Abandoned  Men  and  Lost  Women  as  Factors  in  Gov 
ernment. — General  Benjamin  F.  Butler  as  a  Representative  of  the  Power  to 
Control  Men  Through  Their  Own  Evil.— Worship  of  the  ' 'Anglo-Saxon  Race" 
as  a  Moloch. — The  Inferno  of  Which  the  First  Expansion  Movement  was  a 
Symptom. — The  Demonetization  of  Silver  Effected  as  a  Result  of  It. 

JHILE  the  Civil  war  was  powerless  to  check  the  evolutionary 
work  of  the  positive  forces  of  civilization,  it  demoralized  the 
country  not  less  in  the  northern  states  than  in  the  states  actually 
fought  over  at  the  south.  The  political  and  social  conditions 
at  Washington  which  followed  it  were  indescribably  bad.  In  suggesting 
them,  General  Richard  Taylor,  an  uncompromising  whig,  paraphrases 
Bunyan:  "The  things  seen  by  the  Pilgrims  in  a  dream  were  at  this 
Vanity  Fair  visible  in  the  flesh: — 'all  such  merchandises  sold  as  houses, 
lands,  trades,  places,  honors,  preferments,  states,  lusts,  pleasures  and 
delights  of  all  sorts,  as  bawds,  wives,  husbands,  children,  masters, 
servants,  lives,  blood,  bodies,  souls,  precious  stones  and  what  not/ 
The  eyes  of  the  inspired  tinker  had  pierced  the  darkness  of  two 
hundred  years  and  seen  what  was  to  come.  The  martial  tread  of 
hundreds  of  volunteer  generals,  just  disbanded,  resounded  in  the  street. 
Gorged  with  loot,  they  spent  it  as  lavishly  as  Morgan's  buccaneers  after  the 
sack  of  Panama.  Their  women  sat  at  meat  or  walked  the  highways, 
resplendent  in  jewels,  spoil  of  southern  matrons.  The  camp-followers  of 
the  army  were  here  in  high  carnival,  and  in  character  and  numbers  rivalled 


42  AN  AMERICAN  COMMONER. 

the  attendants  of  Xerxes.  Courtesans  swarmed  everywhere,  about  the 
inns,  around  the  capitol,  in  the  antechambers  of  the  White  House  and  were 

brokers  for  the  transaction  of  all  business Others,  too  numerous  and 

too  insignificant  to  particularize,  were  seen.  These  were  the  cuttle-fish  of 
the  party  whose  appointed  duty  it  was  to  obscure  popular  vision  by  clouds 
of  loyal  declamation.  As  Sicilian  banditti  prepare  for  robberies  and  mur 
ders  by  pious  offerings  on  shrines  of  favorite  saints,  these  brought  out  the 
altar  of  the  'Nation'  and  devoted  themselves  afresh  whenever  Credits 
Mobiliers  and  kindred  enormities  were  afoot,  sharpening  every  question  of 
administration,  finance,  law  or  taxation  on  the  grindstone  of  sectional 
hate." 

Coming  as  this  does  from  an  educated  whig  of  the  school  of  Clay 
and  Webster,  a  member  of  the  "gentleman's  party,"  a  son  of  the  whig 
president  who  was  elected  as  a  result  of  the  Mexican  conquest  which 
forced  the  Civil  war,  it  has  a  high  value  as  an  illustration  not  only  of 
conditions  actually  existing  but  of  the  spirit  which  produced  them. 

In  judging  such  conditions,  we  can  escape  radical  injustice  only  by 
keeping  in  mind  the  radical  infirmities  of  human  nature.  When  General 
Taylor  had  occasion  to  call  on  Thaddeus  Stevens,  Mr.  Stevens  told  him 
with  the  utmost  frankness  that  he  "wanted  no  restoration  of  the  Union  un 
der  the  Constitution,"  which  he  called  "a  worthless  bit  of  old  parchment." 
The  white  people  of  the  south,  he  said,  "ought  never  again  to  be  trusted 
with  power  for  they  would  inevitably  unite  with  northern  copperheads  and 
control  the  government." 

To  prevent  the  "government" — that  is  the  power  to  control  the  supply 
of  commodities  and  money — from  being  administered  by  "southern  rebels 
and  northern  copperheads,"  the  negroes  at  the  south,  acting  under  the 
supervision  of  white  managers,  were  put  in  charge  of  a  sufficient  number 
of  state  governments  to  control  the  Senate  and  the  Electoral  College. 

It  must  have  been  expected  by  those  who  did  this  that  the  negroes 
would  be  greatly  the  sufferers  by  it  and  these  sufferings  were  made  the 


AN  AMERICAN  COMMONER.  43 

means  of  distracting  attention  at  the  north  from  vital  questions  of  reform. 
"Earnest,  credulous  women/'  writes  General  Taylor,  "had  their  feelings 
lacerated  by  stories  in  which  they  as  fondly  believed  as  their  foremothers 
in  Salem  witches.  As  crocodiles  conceal  their  prey  until  it  becomes  savory 
and  tender  and  ripe  for  eating  so  the  radicals  kept  these  dark  corpses  to 
serve  up  to  the  public  when  important  elections  approached  or  some  special 

villainy  was  to  be  enacted  by  the  Congress Doubtless  there  were 

many  acts  of  violence.  When  ignorant  negroes,  instigated  by  pestilent 
emissaries,  went  beyond  endurance,  the  whites  killed  them  and  this  was  to 
be  expected.  The  breed  to  which  these  whites  belong  has  for  eight  cen 
turies  been  the  master  of  the  earth  wherever  it  has  planted  its  foot.  A 
handful  conquered  and  holds  in  subjection  the  crowded  millions  of  India. 
Another  and  smaller  bridles  the  fierce  Caffre  tribes  of  South  Africa.  Place 
but  a  score  of  them  on  the  middle  course  of  the  Congo  and  they  will  rule 
unless  exterminated.  And  all  the  armies  and  all  the  humanitarians  can 
not  change  this  until  the  appointed  time  arrives  for  Ham  to  denominate 
Japhet." 

In  order  to  understand  the  politics  of  i8?2  and  Mr.  Eland's  subse 
quent  action  as  it  developed  the  politics  of  1900,, it  is  necessary  to  read  this 
comprehensive  statement  of  conditions — not  as  those  conditions  impressed 
General  Taylor  on  the  one  hand  or  "earnest  and  credulous  ladies"  on  the 
other,  but  as  they  appealed  to  General  Benjamin  F.  Butler,  as  the  author 
of  the  Civil  Rights  bill  and  as  the  representative  of  the  economic  and 
political  realities  back  of  that  measure.  At  about  this  time  and  for  two 
decades  afterward,  there  traveled  through  the  country  from  newspaper 
office  to  newspaper  office  one  of  those  enthusiastic  philanthropists  whose 
intellects  in  time  of  some  great  public  insanity  fail  to  recover  after  the 
worst  strain  of  passion  is  over.  The  wreck  of  his  intellect,  however,  had 
not  deprived  him  of  the  use  of  his  moral  faculties  and  in  every  newspaper 
office  he  visited,  he  was  accustomed  to  leave  a  communication  signed 
"J.  N.,"  demonstrating  that,  in  the  war  and  after  it,  both  sides  were  really 


44  AN  AMERICAN  COMMONER. 

right  if  they  could  only  be  induced  to  see  it.  On  such  a  point  as  this  he 
might  have  said  that  General  Taylor  was  right  in  objecting  to  the  way 
southern  negroes  were  used  by  financiers  in  London  and  New  York  as  a 
means  of  controlling  the  currency  and  managing  the  war  debt  while  the 
"credulous  ladies"  of  New  England  were  right  in  being  shocked  at  the 
killing  of  negroes  or  any  one  else  in  the  supposed  interest  of  Caucasian  or 
any  other  putative  civilization.  The  intellect  of  this  moralist  and  phil 
osopher  was  unequal  to  the  task  of  deciding  why  no  one  else  could  under 
stand  this.  It  seemed  so  clear  to  him  that  both  sides  were  right  and 
neither  wrong  that  he  traveled  backwards  and  forwards  from  the  Atlantic 
to  the  Pacific,  proclaiming  it  and  announcing  the  coming  of  the  time  when 
"the  veil  would  be  lifted"  and  every  one  would  see  as  he  did. 

If,  after  having  considered  the  intellectual  processes  of  this  represen 
tative  of  extreme  intellectual  feebleness,  we  study  the  methods  of  General 
Butler  as  they  illustrate  the  operations  of  the  subtlest  and  most  thoroughly 
enfranchised  intellects  of  the  period,  we  can  understand  how  such  men  as 
General  Taylor — men  of  strong  moral  character,  wide  reading  and  essen 
tial  rectitude  of  purpose — became  powerless  to  direct  the  course  of  events 
or  even  to  choose  their  own. 

To  General  Butler  as  an  agent  of  the  world-controlling  policies  of  the 
wholesale  dealer  in  those  infernal  passions  which  manifest  themselves 
financially  as  war  debts,  General  Taylor  at  the  south  and  "earnest,  credu 
lous  women"  in  New  England  who  lectured  as  the  representatives  of 
"higher  law,"  were  alike  subjects  to  be  operated  on  and  controlled  through 
their  prejudices.  It  may  be  said  of  General  Butler,  certainly  without  very 
grave  injustice  and  probably  with  essential  accuracy  that  in  politics  he 
"neither  feared  God  nor  regarded  man."  The  most  essential  character 
istic  of  his  political  methods  was  his  ability  to  control  men  through  the 
repulsion  of  their  hatred  and  dislikes.  A  few  great  and  wise  men  know 
how  to  control  others  through  the  love  of  goodness,  natural  if  often  latent 
in  all  men.  Another  class,  believing  in  self-interest  as  the  only  permanent 


AN  AMERICAN   COMMONER.  45 

force  in  politics,  but  frequently  unwilling  to  violate  their  own  sense  of 
decency  too  grossly,  appeal  to  "enlightened  selfishness."  A  still  larger 
class  in  American  politics  offers  its  own  sympathy  with  the  moral  and 
intellectual  vices  of  the  people  as  its  qualification  for  leadership  and  title  to 
confidence.  It  seldom  happens  that  our  political  conditions  give  a  field  for 
the  successful  employment  of  such  extraordinary  talents  as  those  of  Gen 
eral  Butler,  who  found  as  much  enjoyment  in  threatening  such  aristocratic 
southern  whigs  as  General  Taylor  with  the  chimera  of  "negro  equality"  as 
he  did  in  outraging  the  sensibilities  of  the  clerical  and  professional  classes, 
the  decorous  "Brahmins"  of  New  England,  by  pretending  to  demonstrate 
to  the  world  that  it  was  a  Massachusetts  amusement  to  tan  the  skins  of 
paupers  who  presumably  had  died  of  neglect  in  the  almshouses  of  that 
model  commonwealth.* 

Keenly  intellectual,  aware  of  his  own  failings  and  with  an  almost 
diabolical  knowledge  of  the  worst  side  of  human  nature,  restrained  by  no 
sectional  prejudice;  firmly  convinced  that  at  bottom  one  man,  black  or 
white,  is  as  bad  as  another;  capable  of  finding  keen  enjoyment  in  the  obser 
vation  of  those  acute  sufferings  men  inflict  upon  themselves  under  the 
reactions  of  outraged  pride ;  not  really  cruel,  but  a  humorist  rather  than  a 
soldier  or  a  statesman,  and  by  his  humor  scarcely  less  than  by  his  intel 
lectual  habits,  freed  from  the  sympathies  and  moral  restraints  which  so 
largely  influence  other  men,  General  Butler  became,  through  the  defeat  of 
the  liberal  republican  movement  of  i8?2,  the  foremost  representative  in 
Congress  of  the  powerful  international  corporate  interests  which  during 
this  period  operated  through  both  parties  by  such  indirection  as  he  was 
better  able  to  represent  than  any  other  man  in  the  public  life  of  his  genera 
tion. 

It  is  a  fact,  now  self-evident,  that  the  managers  of  the  great  inter 
national  banking  and  other  corporations  which  held  the  southern  agricul 
tural  interests  in  check  by  such  measures  as  the  Civil  Rights  bill  and  the 


*See  report  of  Tewksbury  almshouse  investigation. 


46  AN  AMERICAN   COMMONER. 

Federal  Election  laws  of  that  period,  generally  agreed  with  General  Taylor 
that  it  is  part  of  what  has  since  been  called  "the  white  man's  burden"  to 
"rule  unless  exterminated."  The  movement  which  took  shape  in  the  last 
ten  years  of  the  century  as  "expansion"  and  imperialism,  had  been  planned 
before  the  campaign  of  i872  and  undoubtedly  its  object  was  then  as  after 
wards  to  establish  a  "party  of  property"  which  would  be  as  strong  at  the 
north  as  at  the  south.  But  when  bonds  held  in  vaults  of  English 
and  eastern  banks  were  defiantly  repudiated  as  fraudulent  by  southern 
landholders  whose  property  they  almost  if  not  quite  confiscated,  it  was  not 
feasible  to  perfect  a  party  organization,  controlled  north  and  south  alike, 
by  the  incorporated  capital  which  the  war  had  centralized  in  the  cities. 

Mr.  Bland  agreed  with  Horace  Greeley  and  differed  with  the  financiers 
represented  by  General  Butler  in  believing  in  "liberty  for  all  men,  whether 
they  be  red,  black,  white,  olive  or  tawny-colored."  He  used  this  language 
in  his  Fourth  of  July  address  at  Lebanon  in  1873,  and  he  never  changed — 
least  of  all  when  he  spent  one  sleepless  night  after  another  in  defeating 
the  attack  on  southern  landholders  and  agricultural  producers,  which  Gen 
eral  Butler  led  in  the  Forty- third  Congress — with  keen  enjoyment  for  him 
self  and  unmistakable  disaster  to  what  was  for  the  time  being  his  party. 

Entering  public  life  in  i872,  as  a  supporter  of  the  Greeley  movement, 
Mr.  Bland  was  always  a  democrat — never  in  any  sense  a  "liberal  republi 
can  ;"  but  he  was  in  full  accord  with  Mr.  Greeley  in  believing  that  civiliza 
tion  is  only  a  reality  in  the  measure  in  which  it  increases  liberty  and  that 
the  values  produced  directly  from  the  earth  by  labor  must  be  the  base  of  all 
others.  Throughout  his  public  career,  he  was  consistent  in  holding  these 
fundamental  principles  while  Mr.  Greeley  never  followed  them  as  far  as 
free  trade  or  the  de-centralization  of  power  which  they  involve. 

In  i872,  however,  it  was  clear  to  everyone  of  Mr.  Greeley's  intellectual 
rank,  that  the  essence  if  not  the  actual  form  of  republican  institutions  was 
about  to  be  sacrificed  by  the  holders  of  securities  representing  federal  and 
state  debts  and  the  greatly  inflated  capital  of  the  speculative  corporations, 


AN  AMERICAN  COMMONER.  47 

which  had  been  organized  as  an  expression  of  the  reckless  and  fraudulent 
spirit  produced  by  civil  war.  While  the  southern  states  were  being  con 
trolled  and  reconstructed  as  military  departments,  it  was  made  clear  to 
them  between  1866  and  i87o  as  it  was  afterward  between  1896  and  1900, 
that  if  they  would  join  in  this  movement,  their  reconstruction  would  be 
accepted  as  complete  and  their  "loyalty  to  the  restored  Union"  never  after 
wards  questioned. 

This  new  "era  of  reconciliation"  was  to  be  inaugurated  by  the  revival 
under  Grant  of  the  "expansion"  which  under  Polk  and  Buchanan  had  been 
the  direct  and  unmistakable  cause  of  forcing  into  immediate  and  irresistible 
action  all  the  greatly  diverse  and  not  until  then  convergent  causes  which, 
when  convergent,  made  civil  war  unavoidable. 

The  first  step  towards  achieving  a  "manifest  destiny"  of  world  empire 
for  "the  Anglo-Saxon  race,"  with  its  bonded  debt — for  government  by 
standing  armies,  offensive  navies  and  military  garrison — held  by  the  com 
bined  financiers  of  England  and  America,  was  the  annexation  of  the  West 
India  islands.  One  of  the  issues  of  the  campaigns  of  1856  and  1860  was 
the  charge  that  the  south  wished  to  seize  these  islands  to  be  admitted  as 
slave  states.  Stephen  A.  Douglas,  when  his  position  on  slavery  in  the 
territories  had  become  untenable,  had  sought  to  keep  his  standing  as  a 
presidential  candidate  by  urging  a  movement  for  fulfilling  what  was  called 
"manifest  destiny,"  in  which  north  and  south  were  to  be  united  for  the 
acquisition  of  such  desirable  territory  as  could  not  be  defended  by  its 
owners.  This  movement  did  not  save  Mr.  Douglas  from  being  forced  out 
of  politics  and  its  radical  inconsistency  with  his  theories  of  "local  self- 
government"  involved  in  what  was  called  "squatter  sovereignty"  is  suf 
ficiently  obvious.  The  formation  of  new  states  from  purchased  territory 
had  been  justified  by  southern  statesmen  with  the  assertion  that  such  states 
were  not  imperial  provinces,  but  sovereign  commonwealths,  in  a  Union 
based  only  on  consent  and  formed  only  to  promote  their  convenience  and 
guard  their  rights.  In  1869,  when  invited  to  join  in  a  new  expansion 


4  AN  AMERICAN  COMMONER. 

movement,  the  southern  states  were  suffering  under  the  demonstration  of 
the  inadequacy  of  their  idea  of  state  sovereignty.  General  Grant  himself 
represented  more  fully  than  any  other  man  the  hypothesis  that  the  Declara 
tion  of  Independence  and  the  Kentucky  resolutions  as  interpreted  at  Appo- 
mattox,  mean  that  sovereignty  vests  finally  in  the  commander  who,  having 
men  enough  under  him  to  enforce  his  decisions,  is  most  persistent  in  mov 
ing  on  the  works  of  those  who  dissent  from  him.  Governed,  themselves, 
by  military  garrisons,  the  southern  states  were  not  tempted  to  join  in 
extending  the  system  to  the  West  Indies,  to  Canada  or  to  Mexico  at  a  time 
when  believers  in  "state's  rights"  were  being  reminded  (as  they  were  by 
General  Sherman  himself)  of  their  obligations  as  "paroled  prisoners." 

It  is  true  that  many  of  the  younger  generation  at  the  south  did  believe 
that  the  power  of  the  south  in  the  Union  could  be  best  restored  by  a  foreign 
war,  but  at  this  period  and  afterwards,  as  long  as  they  lived,  men  whose 
views  on  the  control  of  money  were  as  diverse  as  those  of  Allen  G.  Thur- 
man  and  Thomas  F.  Bayard  were  always  ready  to  join  the  representatives 
of  the  Americanism  of  New  England  in  thwarting  the  expression  of  the 
spirit  of  violence. 

In  times  of  great  political  disturbance,  the  strongest  intellect  is  wholly 
inadequate  to  comprehend  what  the  passage  of  time  and  the  development 
of  its  involved  results  makes  self-evident  as  the  governing  causes  of  events. 
Men  can  be  justly  judged  as  individuals  only  as  it  appears  that  they  were 
governed  in  their  relations  to  events  by  a  moral  sense  arising  from  a  gov 
erning  love  of  rectitude  and  the  continuous  habit  of  attempting  to  realize 
it  in  action. 

In  judging  the  events  of  this  period,  no  one  who  wishes  to  understand 
the  play  of  the  great  constructive  and  destructive  forces  of  politics,  can 
afford  to  base  his  judgment  on  mere  sympathy  with  the  contestants  on  one 
side  or  the  other.  General  Grant,  on  whose  attitude  throughout  this  whole 
period  so  much  seemed  to  depend,  had  an  almost  infallible  judgment  of 
how  many  men  it  would  be  necessary  to  sacrifice  in  order  to  drive  a  given 


G.  G.  VEST. 


JOSEPH  W.  BAILEY. 


JOHN  G.  CARLISLE. 


W.  B.  ALLISON. 


AN  AMERICAN  COMMONER.  49 

number  of  enemies,  with  good  rifles  and  steady  aim,  from  an  intrenched 
position.  Such  a  word  as  "judgment,"  however,  is  not  applicable  in  at 
tempting  to  define  the  mental  operation  through  which  he  adjusted  himself 
to  political  conditions.  His  history,  morally,  is  a  tragedy  of  struggle  against 
the  appetites  which  had  mastered  his  youth  and  almost  destroyed  him. 
He  never  yielded  to  them  wholly,  and  at  supreme  crises  of  his  career  he 
could  assert  himself  against  them  and  become  self-mastering  and  self- 
determining.  President  Lincoln,  who  after  he  had  passed  middle  age,  was 
one  of  the  most  thoroughly  self-controlled  men  in  American  history,  knew 
the  strength  and  the  weaknesses  of  General  Grant's  character  so  well  that 
he  was  not  afraid  to  sum  his  opinion  in  such  advice  as  he  gave  a  cabal 
which  attacked  General  Grant  on  account  of  his  intemperance  during  the 
Civil  war — to  "get  some  of  Grant's  whiskey."  Nor  can  this  weakness  of 
his  character,  vital  as  it  was  and  necessary  as  it  is  to  take  it  into  account, 
be  used  in  support  of  any  claim  of  partisan  or  sectional  superiority.  We 
will  see  that  the  first  decisive  struggle  against  the  imperialism  of  the  period 
was  won  under  the  leadership  of  Mr.  Thurman;  yet  the  tradition — no 
doubt  inaccurate  and  unreliable  except  as  it  suggests  the  habits  of  the 
time — is  that  when  the  crisis  came  and  everything  depended  on  Mr.  Thur 
man,  he  overstifnulated  himself  to  such  an  extent  that  it  was  doubtful 
whether  he  would  be  able  to  keep  his  feet  in  the  Senate  chamber  long 
enough  to  deliver  his  protest.  When  we  reflect  that  life  itself,  considered 
in  its  physical  manifestations,  is  a  process  of  oxidation ;  when  we  remember 
that  the  nerves  of  those  who  accomplish  most  for  others  are  inevitably  the 
most  fretted  by  the  corrosion  of  the  chemical  reactions  which  make  possible 
the  activities  of  physical  existence ;  when  we  know  that  under  the  calm  or 
phlegmatic  exterior  of  men  of  great  achievement,  there  is  the  latent  con 
sciousness  of  the  sum  of  all  the  suffering  it  has  cost  them,  we  can  not 
afford  to  judge  them  by  their  weaknesses.  The  man  who,  however  blindly, 
follows  at  his  own  expense,  the  impulses  of  his  sense  of  duty,  is  to  be 
judged  by  the  positive  good  he  has  achieved — not  by  his  negations.  When 
4 


50  AN  AMERICAN  COMMONER. 

we  do  consider  these,  when  we  judge  the  evil  in  the  greatest  and  strongest 
nature  by  the  consciousness  of  the  evil  in  our  own,  we  can  the  better  under 
stand  why  after  such  self-judgment,  Lincoln,  aware  of  sharing  and  being 
acted  on  by  all  the  forces  of  a  period  of  delirium,  should  continually 
repeat :  "O  why  should  the  spirit  of  mortal  be  proud." 

While  it  is  not  advisable  for  the  student  of  political  phenomena  to  give 
exclusive  attention  to  their  ethical  values — since  if  he  does  he  is  likely  to 
become  unintelligible,  probably  to  himself  and  certainly  to  others — yet 
nothing  is  more  a  practical  reality  in  politics  than  the  moral  springs  of  ac 
tion.  The  physiology  of  their  manifestation  requires  their  intelligent  con 
sideration.  Considering  the  physiology  of  Civil  war  politics,  we  can  not 
avoid  seeing  everywhere  the  symptoms  of  deep-seated  nervous  disorder, 
manifesting  itself  in  many  forms  of  hysterical  action  and  sometimes  ap 
proximating  dangerously  the  fixed  delusions  which  constitute  permanent 
insanity.  Hate,  the  desire  to  do  others  harm,  to  take  advantage  of  them  for 
their  oppression,  can  not  be  indulged  by  any  individual  or  any  people  with 
out  a  nervous  strain  which  in  its  reaction,  leaves  the  entire  nervous  system 
disordered.  The  attempt  to  repair  by  stimulants  the  nervous  waste  thus 
superinduced  is  almost  inevitable  and  it  will  be  impossible  for  the  scientific 
observer,  when  he  comes,  to  advance  into  the  physiological  investigation  of 
the  politics  of  that  period  without  finding  traces  of  alcoholization  at  every 
step, 

It  is  necessary  to  say  this  not  only  to  avoid  what  might  otherwise 
seem  a  partisan  or  sectional  attack  on  General  Grant,  but  because  it  is  a 
fundamental  truth  of  American  morals.  That  the  course  of  events  was 
determined  conclusively  by  the  weakness  of  this  man  or  that,  or  any 
number  of  men  is  not  to  be  believed — at  least  not  as  a  part  of  the  hypothesis 
governing  the  present  attempt  to  make  the  events  of  this  period  more 
intelligible.  That  hypothesis  involves  the  assumption  that  the  course  of 
events  is  finally  determined  by  the  good  that  is  in  individuals  and  peoples — 
not  by  the  merely  negative  qualities  through  which  they  bring  suffering 


AN  AMERICAN  COMMONER.  5  I 

on  themselves  and  others.  Hence  the  real  Grant  of  American  history  is, 
under  that  hypothesis,  the  man  who,  at  Mount  MacGregor,  dying  of 
cancer  caused  by  the  cumulative  nervous  strain  of  his  whole  life,  won  con 
trol  of  himself,  higher  consciousness  of  himself,  fuller  charity  for  his 
friends  and  his  enemies,  fuller  tolerance  for  the  infirmities  of  all  mankind. 
That  is  the  permanent  reality  of  the  man.  But  the  Grant  of  i87o  to  1880 
— of  "The  Man  on  Horseback"  decade — was  the  least  heroic  of  men.  Mr. 
Bland  judged  him  well  in  judging  him  with  the  utmost  charity.  "In  com 
pany  with  the  Missouri  delegation,  or  a  part  of  them,"  he  writes  (Decem 
ber  5th,  1873),  I  visited  the  White  House  and  called  upon  the  president. 
He  seems  to  be  eating  and  drinking  a  little  too  much.  Otherwise,  I  liked 
Grant's  appearance  very  well.  I  believe  him  to  be  a  better  man  than  our 
party  gives  him  credit  for."* 

Around  the  Grant  of  i87o,  who  ate  and  drank  and  smoked  a  little  too 
much;  who  wanted  a  little  too  much  power  and  a  little  too  much  money, 
were  men  who  in  their  own  vernacular  had  "thrown  off  the  limit."  The 
'  holders  of  the  war  debt,  which  in  i87o  stood  at  nearly  two  and  a  half 
billion  dollars  ($2,480,672,427  at  the  close  of  the  fiscal  year),  were  largely 
international  operators,  caring  little  or  nothing  for  the  sectional  hatreds  of 
America  except  as  means  of  realizing  larger  profits  for  themselves  and 
nothing  at  all  for  American  institutions  except  as  obstacles  to  their  con 
trol  of  the  country.  Co-operating  with  them,  more  through  sympathy 
than  through  full  consciousness  of  their  plans,  were  the  holders  of  a  large 
part  of  the  speculative  debt  of  American  corporations — by  this  time  so 
great  that  if  expressed  in  figures  at  all  they  would  be  unintelligible.  The 
million  had  become  the  unit  for  these  operators^  engaged  in  what  has  been 
called  "financing  the  future  of  the  country" — that  is,  in  trying  to  sell  what 
they  did  not  own,  to  market  values  as  yet  uncreated  and  to  raise  cash  by 
mortgaging  the  products  of  the  labor  of  children  still  at  school  or  then 
unborn,  who  in  the  twentieth  century  must  deal  with  the  problems  of 


*From  a  letter  to  Mrs.  Bland. 


52  AN  AMERICAN   COMMONER. 

economic  wrong  and  social  injustice  thus  created  or  perpetuated. 

The  mode  through  which  the  political  managers  representing  these 
policies,  proposed  to  carry  them  out  was  twofold — that  of  aggression 
abroad  through  "expansion"  and  coercion,  or  the  threat  if  it,  at  home; 
intended  to  compel  the  agricultural  producers  of  the  southern  states  either 
to  accept  the  new  order  of  things  through  actual  bargain  or  through  the 
fear  of  "negro  domination."  The  immediate  object  to  be  accom 
plished  under  the  cover  of  this  agitation  was  the  control  of  the  issue  and 
supply  of  money  and  of  the  supply  of  commodities  produced  at  home  or 
imported.  The  white  people  of  the  south,  not  yet  able  to  see  the  only  pos 
sible  solution  of  "the  negro  question"  in  the  fullest  possible  expression  of 
their  own  moral  superiority,  were  inexpressibly  shocked  and  alarmed  by 
the  overwhelming  assault  made  on  them  with  the  unfortunate  negro  as  the 
agent  of  it;  but  governed  by  the  sum  of  individual  and  inherited  virtues, 
they  refused  to  submit,  to  compromise  or  to  trade.  Relying  too  much  on 
merely  intellectual  superiority,  and  inclined  too  much  to  follow  such  leaders 
as  General  Taylor  in  the  worship  of  a  foul,  bloody  and  at  last  impotent 
Moloch  called  "the  Anglo-Saxon  race,"  they  inaugurated  nevertheless  a 
campaign  of  passive  resistance  which,  considered  for  what  it  really  was — 
a  measure  of  sectional  war — was  superior  to  the  tactics  of  the  leaders  of 
their  own  or  of  the  conquering  Federal  armies  in  the  field.  The  future 
historian  will  find  much  that  is  repulsive  in  it  as  he  will  find  much  that  is 
repulsive  in  Sherman's  march  to  the  sea  or  Sheridan's  campaign  in  the 
Valley  of  Virginia.  He  will  study  it  in  its  connection  with  the  Civil  war 
and  will  judge  it  as  not  merely  a  result  but  as  actually  a  part  of  the  war. 
That  a  sectional  war  was  ever  expedient ;  ever  unavoidable,  ever  necessary 
in  the  United  States ;  or  that  any  positive  good  ever  came  because  of  it — 
it  is  no  part  of  the  purpose  of  this  chapter  to  admit.  It  is  enough  to  assert 
here,  not  for  the  sake  of  convincing  but  merely  to  indicate  the  standpoint 
from  which  the  politics  of  the  Civil  war  period  is  being  judged,  that  the 
actual  progress  of  the  human  race  in  the  nineteenth  century  will  probably 


AN  AMERICAN  COMMONER.  53 

appear  on  examination  to  have  been  retarded  more  by  the  Civil  war  in 
America  than  by  any  other  overt  act  of  reaction  whatever.  As  a  result  of 
the  war  in  America,  the  control  of  the  machinery  of  productive  civilization, 
an  inheritance  of  the  race  from  the  disinterested  genius  of  all  time,  passed 
into  the  hands  of  a  constantly  decreasing  number  of  men  who,  co-operating 
with  the  holders  of  war  debts,  entrenched  themselves  as  a  governing  class 
both  in  Europe  and  America. 

While  the  south  was  righting  desperately  against  "bayonet  rule  and 
negro  domination;"  while  such  "original  abolitionists"  of  the  north  as 
Horace  Greeley,  Seward  and  Charles  Sumner  were  dying  heart-broken  and 
deserted,  protesting  with  their  last  breath  against  militarism  and  imperial 
ism,  the  actual  government — the  government  which  means  control  of  pro 
duction  and  exchange — was  revolutionized  and  the  controlling  forces  in 
American  politics  became  international.  A  single  feature  of  this  great 
change  was  the  demonetization  of  silver  in  i872 — the  year  in  which  Mr. 
Bland  entered  politics  in  support  of  the  Greeley  campaign  against  imperial 
ism. 


CHAPTER  VI. 

The  Gold  Conspiracy  and  Black  Friday. — Banker  Henry  Clews  Describes  the  Means 
Used  to  Control  General  Grant.— Champagne  and  a  Pleasure  Party.— The  Treas 
ury  as  a  Factor  in  Speculation. — The  Rothschilds  in  American  Politics. — The 
Belmonts  as  their  Agents  and  Representatives. — Capitalizing  a  Revolution. — The 
Isthmian  Canal  Speculation  Under  Grant  and  its  Connection  with  Coercive 
Expansion. — The  Imperialistic  Plot  Against  Puerto  Rico,  San  Domingo  and 
Cuba. — Orville  Babcock  as  an  Envoy  Extraordinary. — History  Which  Repeated 
Itself  Under  the  McKinley  Administration. — The  Liberty  of  the  Innocent 
Against  the  Safety  of  the  Guilty.— The  Governing  Motive  of  Civilization.— 
Blaine  on  Civil  Rights. — Plutocracy  as  an  Insanity. — The  Law  of  Perfect  Lib 
erty. — Thurman,  Bland,  Greeley  and  Sumner. — Government  by  Garrison. — Lord 
Kitchener  and  His  College  at  Khartoum. — The  Civilization  of  Southern  Negroes 
and  the  Anglo-Saxonism  of  Fraudulent  Bondholders. — International  Plutocracy 
and  Murder  as  a  Fine  Art. 

N  i87o,  it  was  not  possible  for  General  Grant  or  any  one  else  to 
understand  the  full  meaning  of  the  movement  which  followed 
the  Civil  war.  As  far  as  he  understood  himself  and  his  genera 
tion  at  all,  Grant  was  an  American,  a  believer  in  American 
institutions  and  all  the  freedom  compatible  with  West  Point  views 
of  social  order.  He  was  plain  in  dress  and  speech  and  probably  felt 
pride  rather  than  shame  in  having  supported  himself  by  cutting  cordwood 
for  the  St.  Louis  market.  But  among  those  who  were  nearest  to  him  and 
by  whom  he  was  most  deeply  influenced,  reverence  for  material  success, 
for  power,  for  rank,  for  money  and  its  manifestations  in  splendid  and 
luxurious  living,  was  a  controlling  force.  This  was  so  thoroughly  under 
stood  by  the  "financiers"  of  the  time  that  it  was  habitually  taken  into 
account,  not  only  in  shaping  public  policies  but  in  such  minor  operations 
as  the  gold  conspiracy  of  1869  which  resulted  in  "Black  Friday."  In  his 
"Twenty-Eight  Years  in  Wall  Street/'  Mr.  Henry  Clews,  the  New  York 
banker — certainly  not  a  witness  who  "can  be  suspected  of  undue  prejudice 
against  such  diplomacy  as  financiers  consider  a  business  necessity — has 

54 


AN  AMERICAN  COMMONER.  55 

given  a  succinct  and  intelligible  though  cautious  account  of  how  General 
Grant  was  played  upon  at  that  period  of  speculative  conspiracies.  Mr.  Jay 
Gould  had  originally  associated  with  him  in  his  plan  to  control  the  Ameri 
can  gold  supply,  Stern  Brothers,  of  London,  probably  representatives  of 
one  or  more  of  the  great  international  operators  who  during  this  epoch 
succeeded  in  imposing  Mr.  Belmont,  of  New  York,  their  American  agent, 
on  the  democratic  party  as  a  national  manager.  It  was  proposed  to  con 
vince  General  Grant  that  it  would  be  patriotic  financiering  to  hold  as  much 
gold  as  possible  in  the  treasury  "in  order  to  promote  the  export  movement 
of  grain  and  cotton."  In  carrying  out  this  plan,  General  Grant  was 
induced  to  become  the  guest  of  a  party  of  financiers  on  an  excursion  to  the 
Gilmore  Peace  Jubilee  in  Boston.  The  subject  was  broached  by  Mr.  Gould 
in  connection  with  the  usual  "refreshments."  "It  was  a  feast  of  reason" 
writes  Mr.  Clews,*  "and  those  who  have  imagined  that  it  was  all  flow  of 
soul  on  that  festive  occasion  do  scant  justice  to  the  intelligence  that  was  at 
the  bottom  of  the  deep  design  of  the  nocturnal  excursion  planned  by 
Gould,  Fisk  and  Company."  After  this  excursion,  the  combination  com 
municated  with  General  Grant  through  Mr.  Abel  R.  Corbin,  of  whom  Mr. 
Clews  writes :  "Mr.  Abel  R.  Corbin  came  in  quite  handy  at  this  juncture 
to  help  further  the  designs  of  Mr.  Gould.  He  was  a  man  of  fair  education 
and  considerable  experience  both  in  business  and  politics.  He  had  been  a 
lobbyist  in  Washington  for  some  years.  He  was  well-informed  on  finan 
cial  matters,  a  pretty  good  writer  and  could  talk  like  a  book.  His  wife  was 
a  sister  of  Mrs.  Grant  and  he  had  a  good  opportunity  for  reaching  the 
presidential  ear  when  he  was  employed  to  the  best  advantage."* 

This  will  suggest  the  political  methods  of  a  time  when  the  attempt  was 
being  made  to  control  the  policies  of  both  parties  in  the  United  States  as  a 
means  of  controlling  the  national  and  international  movement  of  money 
and  trade.  The  attempt  was  made  to  frame  the  issues  on  which  parties 
should  divide  so  as  to  amuse  or  to  frighten  the  masses  of  the  people  with 


*"Twenty  Eight  Years  in  Wall  Street,"  by  Henry  Clews. 


56  AN  AMERICAN  COMMONER. 

fictitious  issues  while  the  objects  of  plans  laid  in  London  and  New  York 
bank  parlors  were  being  attained.  It  is  possible  now  to  see  clearly  the  mo 
tives  which  governed  such  diplomats  in  rallying  to  the  defense  of  "Anglo- 
Saxon  civilization"  at  the  south  against  attacks  which  they  themselves  had 
promoted  in  advance.  The  same  phenomenon  was  seen  again  in  1898  when, 
as  a  means  of  reviving  through  republican  administration  at  Washington 
the  "expansion  movement"  of  the  Grant  administration,  the  London  banks 
and  their  associates  in  New  York  and  other  American  cities,  operated 
through  agents  in  democratic  committees  to  prevent  democratic  platforms 
from  declaring  against  the  control  of  Puerto  Rico,  Cuba  and  Hawaii  by 
military  garrisons  maintained  as  a  preliminary  to  assuming  their  "consent" 
to  annexation.  It  is  scarcely  a  mere  coincidence  that  the  estate  left  by  Mr. 
August  Belmont,  who,  under  General  Grant  was  imposed  by  his  principals, 
the  Rothschilds,  on  the  democratic  party  as  a  campaign  manager,  was 
represented  in  the  movement  of  1898  to  displace  Mr.  Bland  from  demo 
cratic  leadership.  In  connection  with  the  "expansion"  movement  of  1898 
and  1899,  it  is  interesting  to  quote  an  authority  so  well  informed  as  Mr. 
Clews  on  what  the  elder  Belmont  represented  during  the  epoch  of 
attempted  expansion  under  General  Grant :  "August  Belmont,"  he  says,* 
"came  to  New  York  comparatively  poor  and  is  now  (i887)  worth  millions. 
As  a  representative  of  the  Rothschilds  in  this  country,  he  has  for  many 

years  held  a  high  position  in  the  financial  world He  was  born  in  the 

Rhenish  Palatinate  sixty-eight  years  ago.  His  father  was  a  man  in  well- 
to-do  circumstances  who  sent  him  when  he  was  thirteen  years  old  to  be 
come  an  apprenticed  clerk  to  the  Rothschilds  in  their  Frankfort  house 

In  1837,  the  famous  house,  recognizing  the  promising  field  for  investment 
in  this  country,  sent  young  Belmont  to  New  York  as  their  agent,  a  position 
he  held  until  1858  when  he  became  their  American  correspondent  and 
general  representative,  and  this  responsible  post  he  has  held  ever  since. . . . 
He  has  always  been  a  staunch  democrat  and  for  several  years  was  chairman 

*Page  595,  "Twenty-Eight  Years  in  Wall  Street." 


AN  AMERICAN  COMMONER.  57 

of  the  democratic  national  committee."  The  meaning  of  the  Rothschild 
influence  in  international  politics  is  suggested,  seemingly  without  unfriend 
liness  by  Mr.  Clews  in  the  thirty-eighth  chapter  of  his  History  of  Wall 
Street — a  chapter  this  summary  of  which  as  he  gives  it  in  his  table  of  con 
tents  will  be  enough  for  present  quotation: 

"The  Rothschilds:  Beginning  of  the  Financial  Career  of  the  Great 
House  of  Rothschild.  The  Hessian  Blood  Money  the  First  Foundation  of 
their  Fortune.  How  the  Firm  of  Five  Original  Brothers  Was  Consti 
tuted  ;  Nathan  the  Greatest  Speculator  of  the  Family ;  His  Career  in  Great 
Britain  and  How  He  Misrepresented  the  Result  of  the  Battle  of  Waterloo 
for  Speculative  Purposes;  Creating  a  Panic  on  the  London  Stock  Ex 
change  ;  His  Terror  of  Being  Assassinated." 

This  ought  to  be  enough  to  suggest  to  the  reader  the  character  of  the 
influences  which  Mr.  Bland  opposed  in  his  own  and  in  the  republican  party 
from  1 872  until  his  death  in  1899.  He  did  not  change  and  with  that  clear 
ness  of  vision  which  can  come  only  from  honesty  of  purpose,  he  saw  the 
realities  from  which  the  attention  of  so  many  others  was  distracted  by  the 
commonplace  and  often  imbecile  pretenses  of  the  agents  of  fraud. 

In  excusing  General  Grant,  it  is  often  demonstrated  in  his  behalf  that 
at  the  climax  of  the  gold  conspiracy  of  1868,  he  caused  the  treasury  to  sell 
gold  on  the  "bear"  side  of  the  market.  There  is  no  present  occasion  either 
to  blame  or  to  vindicate  him  in  such  a  connection.  It  is  important  to  fix 
attention  on  the  central  fact  that  at  this  period,  the  United  States  Treasury 
was  one  of  the  great  speculative  forces  of  the  world  and  that  its  control  was 
the  political  objective  of  the  speculative  and  usurious  class  which  has  con 
trolled  the  Bank  of  England  since  the  Napoleonic  wars.  It  is  not  neces 
sary  to  inquire  why  gold  is  held  out  of  circulation  by  the  treasury  to 
increase  prices  at  one  time  or  thrown  on  the  market  at  another  with  the 
avowed  purpose  of  lowering  them.  The  speculative  character  of  treasury 
management,  the  fact  that  as  the  rule  of  national  campaigns  since  the  Civil 
war,  the  control  of  the  treasury  has  b'een  hypothecated  in  advance  of 


58  AN  AMERICAN  COMMONER. 

presidential  elections  to  national  banks  controlled  from  New  York,  London, 
Berlin  and  Paris — this  is  the  point  of  vital  interest  if  we  are  not  to  lose  the 
political  meaning  of  the  last  quarter  of  the  nineteenth  century,  as  it  showed 
itself  in  reaction  at  the  close. 


On  the  tenth  of  October,  1868,  a  revolution  was  inaugurated  in  the 
island  of  Cuba.  It  is  believed  that  both  this  movement  and  the  similar  one 
of  nearly  twenty  years  later  were  "capitalized"  in  New  York,  not  with  any 
intention  of  allowing  the  Cubans  to  establish  a  republic  as  they  hoped  to 
do,  but  for  the  purpose  of  taking  possession  of  the  island  in  the  interest  of 
speculative  syndicates  as  soon  as  Spain  had  been  dispossessed.  This  was 
planned  again  in  1896  and  1897,  and  in  1898  the  attempt  was  made  to  con 
trol  the  democratic  party  in  favor  of  methods  already  matured  for  carrying 
it  out  through  the  republican  administration.  The  presumption  is  strong 
on  the  evidence  that  the  same  plan  had  been  matured  in  1868  in  connection 
with  the  Isthmian  canal  and  railroad  speculations  of  that  epoch.  The  con 
trol  of  the  cane-sugar  and  superfine  tobacco  supply  was  in  itself  a  sufficient 
inducement,  even  had  there  existed  no  plan  for  using  the  new  patriotic 
expansion  movement  as  a  means  of  diverting  public  attention  from  the 
inauguration  of  a  "strong  government"  with  an  army  large  enough  to  pre 
vent  the  possibility  of  failure  in  the  workings  of  the  proposed  system  of 
currency  and  taxation. 

The  ultimate  fate  of  Cuba,  however,  did  not  become  the  actual  issue  in 
the  expansion  movement  under  Grant.  A  year  after  the  Cuban  revolution 
began,  the  president  sent  his  private  secretary,  Orville  Babcock,  to  San 
Domingo  to  arrange  for  the  annexation  of  that  island.  Mr.  Babcock 
negotiated  a  treaty  similar  in  its  methods  to  that  offered  at  the  time 
Hawaii  was  about  to  be  seized.  The  result,  as  it  retired  Charles  Sumner 
from  republican  leadership  and  forced  Allen  G.  Thurman  forward  in  the 
democratic  party,  would  have  been  of  primary  importance  even  if  the 


AN  AMERICAN  COMMONER.  59 

treaty  had  not  been  part  of  the  imperialistic  movement  for  the  control  of 
money  and  commodity  supply. 

Under  cover  of  the  discussion  thus  provoked,  supplemented  by  vigor 
ous  and  highly  artistic  torture  of  the  "paroled  prisoners"  of  the  south, 
silver  was  demonetized  and  the  currency  contracted — not  with  the  consent, 
but  undoubtedly  with  the  tacit  assent  of  not  a  few  real  but  timid  opponents 
of  internationalist  control  of  the  American  treasury  who  afterwards  pro 
fessed  to  be  surprised  at  what  had  been  done.  The  general  public,  which 
in  1898  was  harangued  by  hired  orators  in  favor  of  "expansion,"  which 
a  month  after  the  demonetization  of  silver  in  1900,  still  had  its  attention 
artistically  focused  on  a  discussion  of  the  system  to  be  used  in  taxing 
Puerto  Rico  and  other  territory  held  by  military  garrison,  knew  little  or 
nothing  of  the  realities  of  politics  in  i872  and  1873,  and  it  was  not  until 
Mr.  Bland  forced  it  that  the  attention  of  those  most  vitally  interested  was 
turned  to  the  real  meaning  of  the  "crime  of  1873." 

As  in  1898,  General  Fitzhugh  Lee  and  General  Wheeler  were  put  at 
the  front  to  hold  the  attention  of  the  south  while  southern  and  western 
regiments  were  carefully  selected  to  do  the  worst  work  of  garrison  control 
in  the  West  Indies  and  Hawaii,  and  of  actual  butchery  in  the  Philippines, 
so  from  1868  to  i872,  the  ex-Confederate  element  of  the  south,  under  plans 
no  doubt  devised  if  not  actually  originated  in  London  banks,  were  offered 
amnesty  and  promotion  in  consideration  of  their  allegiance  to  a  proposed 
empire.  A  bill  offering  a  general  amnesty  to  all  political  offenders — except 
a  sufficient  number  to  prevent  the  sectional  issue  from  being  lost — was 
part  of  the  machinery  used  for  scene-shifting  purposes  by  the  able  stage- 
managers  of  the  period.  When  the  south  failed  to  respond,  this  exhibi 
tion  of  magnanimity  became  still  more  artistic.  If  we  remember  that  to 
such  operators  the  control  of  commodity  and  money  supply  means  every 
thing,  we  can  understand  that  the  purpose  to  be  achieved  consisted  in  dis 
tracting  public  attention  from  real  issues,  and  that  though  the  consent  of 
the  south  to  the  contemplated  revolution  would  have  been  convenient  it 


60  AN  AMERICAN  COMMONER. 

was  not  vital.  When  the  south  refused  "reconciliation,"  the  same  purpose 
of  controlling  public  attention  was  achieved  through  the  renewed  threat  of 
coercion.  There  is  something  eternally  memorable  in  the  ingenuity  with 
which  the  white  people  of  the  south  were  tortured  and  threatened — not  by 
the  people  of  the  north  but  by  ingenious  financiers — chiefly  for  the 
purpose  of  exciting  them  to  outbursts  of  passion  which  would  postpone 
the  discussion  of  economic  reforms.  After  the  refusal  of  the  south  as  a 
whole  to  follow  General  Longstreet  and  other  leaders  who  had  been  won 
over  in  good  faith  to  the  "plan  of  reconciliation,"  the  "Civil  Rights"  agita 
tion  was  renewed  with  telling  effect.  Aspiring  young  colored  men  of  good 
ability  and  the  best  intentions  were  brought  forward  to  make  magnani 
mous  speeches,  forgiving,  in  the  Congressional  Record  and  the  newspapers, 
the  wrongs  of  their  race,  asking  pardon  for  all  "ex-rebels"  except  a  few  of 
"the  worst  traitors,"  pleading  that  their  former  masters  should  be  allowed 
to  take  the  oath  recanting  rebellion  and  in  the  same  connection,  demanding 
the  passage  of  the  law  making  it  an  offense  for  hotel-keepers,  owners  of 
theatres,  public  school  teachers,  railroad  owners  and  those  who  control 
other  like  public  or  semi-public  institutions  to  take  steps  for  separating  the 
races.  Mr.  Elaine  in  his  Twenty  Years  in  Congress  (Volume  II,  page 
513),  illustrates  this  with  his  usual  placid  astuteness  of  statement: 

"The  democrats,"  he  says,  "were  now  to  witness  an  exhibition  of 
magnanimity  in  the  colored  representatives  which  had  not  been  shown 
towards  them.  When  the  amnesty  bill  came  before  the  House  for  con 
sideration,  Mr.  Rainey  of  South  Carolina,  speaking  for  the  colored  race 
whom  he  represented,  said :  'It  is  not  the  disposition  of  my  constituents 
that  these  disabilities  should  be  longer  retained.  We  are  desirous  of  being 
magnanimous.  It  may  be  that  we  are  so  to  a  fault.  Nevertheless  we  have 
open  and  frank  hearts  to  those  who  were  our  former  oppressors  and  task 
masters.  We  foster  no  enmity  now,  and  we  desire  to  foster  none,  for  their 
acts  in  the  past  to  us  or  to  the  government  we  love  so  well.  But  while 
we  are  willing  to  accord  them  their  enfranchisement  and  here  to-day  give 

our  votes  that  they  may  be  amnestied we  invoke  you  gentlemen  to 

show 'the  same  kindly  feeling  toward  us,  a  race  long  oppressed,  and  in 
demonstration  of  this  humane  and  just  feeling,  I  implore  you  to  give  sup- 


AN  AMERICAN  COMMONER.  6 1 

port  to  the  Civil  Rights  bill  we  have  been  asking  at  your  hands,  lo  these 
many  days !" 

It  is  not  necessary  to  stop  to  inquire  whether  such  ingenious  inven 
tions  for  exciting  anger  of  the  white  people  of  the  south  originated  in  any 
given  instance  with  the  speaker  who  assumed  responsibility  for  them. 
They  were  a  part  of  the  politics  of  a  time  when  the  infernal  passions  of 
hate  and  covetousness  acted  and  reacted  upon  each  other.  The  hot  blood 
of  violence  made  success  easy  for  plans  of  wrongful  acquisition,  carefully 
devised  in  the  cold  blood  of  fraud.  The  governing  motive  of  civilization, 
kindness,  helpfulness,  the  love  of  fair  play,  the  underlying  sense  that 
increasing  liberty  is  the  necessary  and  only  possible  expression  of  justice, 
never  ceased  to  operate  and  the  world  never  ceased  to  move  forward,  but 
surface  conditions  of  the  time  were  such  that  every  reactionist,  every  self- 
convicted  believer  that  the  liberty  of  the  innocent  is  incompatible  with  the 
safety  of  the  guilty ;  every  one  who  had  already  acquired  or  who  expected 
to  acquire  at  the  expense  of  others,  wealth,  position,  or  any  other  form 
of  the  delegated  power  of  co-operative  society,  rejoiced  in  the  belief  that 
such  conditions  as  had  not  existed  since  the  middle  of  the  eighteenth  cen 
tury  could  be  re-established  with  all  the  increase  of  possession  and  power 
made  possible  for  the  intellectual  "pervert"  by  the  great  increase  in  the 
creative  resources  of  civilization,  resulting  from  the  natural  evolutionary 
processes  of  the  healthy  human  intellect.  In  insane  cunning,  in  impotent 
planning  to  turn  back  the  progress  of  civilization  and  in  the  audacity  of 
their  mistaken  hopes  of  coming  into  immediate  control  of  the  world,  those 
victims  of  mental  disorder  who  are  made  monomaniacal  by  craving  for 
the  luxury  and  the  power  which  the  possession  of  large  sums  of  money 
gives,  were  never  more  insistent  on  making  their  worst  vices,  their  most 
criminal  insanities,  their  most  futile  imbecilities,  a  part  of  the  permanent 
record  of  the  world's  history  than  they  were  at  the  beginning  of  the  last 
quarter  of  the  nineteenth  century.  In  the  closing  years  of  the  century, 
we  have  had  another  signal  exhibition  of  the  same  spirit,  but  it  could  not 


62  AN  AMERICAN   COMMONER. 

have  surpassed  if  it  could  have  equalled  in  the  cunning  of  its  indirections, 
in  its  recklessness  of  the  worst  :n justices,  in  its  readiness  to  shed  blood 
as  a  means  of  facilitating  commercial  and  financial  cheating,  that  which 
manifested  itself  from  1868  to  1880. 

There  is  no  desire  here  to  arraign  a  class  without  exception  or  to  make 
a  sectional  or  partisan  plea  of  confession  and  avoidance.  What  is  attempted 
is  the  examination  of  human  nature  as  it  manifests  itself  not  only  through 
the  moral  and  intellectual  diseases  so  often  obvious  as  temporarily  the 
governing  forces  of  politics,  but  as  it  shows  itself  in  its  underlying  recti 
tude  of  intention,  in  its  sympathy  with  what  no  force  and  no  fraud  can 
prevent  from  becoming  at  last  the  law  of  politics,  of  production,  of  distri 
bution,  of  co-operative  human  activity  in  all  its  forms — the  law  of  perfect 
liberty  under  which  every  man  born  into  the  world  has  a  supreme,  an  ab 
solute  and  in  the  end  an  omnipotent  right  to  express  to  the  utmost  limit  of 
his  own  intention  all  the  good  that  is  in  him. 

To  sympathize  with  intellectual  and  physical  sufferings  due  to  the 
intellectual  and  physical  diseases  of  all  men  of  every  class,  of  every  estate, 
of  every  country  is  obviously  a  duty  and  is  logically  a  necessity.  The  only 
higher  claim  on  any  human  intellect  is  that  of  duty  to  the  general  principles 
of  progress,  the  deep  moral  truths  of  intellectual  and  physical  existence, 
through  which  alone  such  sufferings  can  be  minimized.  It  is  not  possible 
for  any  man  to  free  himself  from  his  sympathies  and  his  prejudices  so  as 
to  be  able  to  judge  justly  those  events  of  which  he  himself  and  those  he 
loves  have  been  a  part.  It  is  not  easy  even  to  attempt  it,  but  as  far  as  the 
attempt  is  possible,  it  is  made  here  in  what  is  said  of  the  politics  of  this 
crucial  period. 

The  object  of  primary  interest  in  taking  note  of  the  surface  phenom 
ena  of  the  time,  is  the  remarkable  fact  that  the  plans  of  commercial  impe 
rialism  reacted  by  forcing  together  at  once  the  ex-slaveholders  of  the  south 
and  the  original  abolitionists  of  the  north — classes  which,  each  in  its  own 
way,  represented  the  highest  possibilities  of  individual  initiative.  This 


AN  AMERICAN  COMMONER.  63 

could  not  have  been  foreseen  by  those  who  planned  the  campaign  of  i872 
and  it  is  one  of  the  factors  which  are  still  working  for  their  defeat.  When 
we  examine  more  closely  into  the  character  of  such  men  as  Thurman  and 
Bland,  Greeley  and  Sumner,  it  will  become  clear  as  a  part  of  the  logic  of 
the  situation,  but  in  the  politics  of  Grant's  first  administration,  nothing  was 
clear — the  future  of  America  seeming  to  have  become  a  necessary  part  of 
"the  frightful  welter"  created  by  militant  commercialism  in  Europe. 

Under  the  effects  of  the  continually  urged  threat  of  "negro  domina 
tion"  supported  by  the  presence  of  military  garrisons,  and  realized  in  the 
imposition  of  ruinous  taxes  made  permanent  by  extravagant  issues  of  state 
bonds,  the  south  was  in  danger  of  anarchy  much  worse  than  that  which 
existed  during  the  progress  of  actual  fighting  in  the  Civil  war.  That  this 
was  averted  is  largely  due  to  the  good  sense  and  good  conduct  of  the 
negroes  themselves.  More  easily  influenced  by  suggestion  than  the 
whites,  many  negroes  might  be  induced  temporarily  to  antagonize  and  to 
attempt  to  control  white  people  whose  intellectual  superiority  they  recog 
nized.  But  as  a  rule  when  left  to  themselves,  they  had  a  cheerful  and  re 
spectful  toleration  of  what  they  regarded  as  wrong  in  others,  which  if  it 
were  realized  generally  in  the  operation  of  highly  developed  intellects, 
would  soon  inaugurate  whatever  millennium  is  possible  on  earth.  While 
it  was  seldom  possible  to  induce  them  to  vote  the  democratic  ticket  at  this 
period,  they  were  accustomed  to  listen  with  deferential  politeness  to  the 
opinions  of  white  democrats,  parrying,  with  a  tact  possible  only  for  habit 
ual  courtesy,  all  attempts  to  draw  them  into  argument  for  which  they  felt 
themselves  unequal.  Having  their  tendency  to  vote  the  republican  ticket 
as  an  acquired  instinct,  they  had  inherent  in  them  the  instincts  of  good 
nature  and  tolerance,  acquired  through  the  habitual  submission  of  enforced 
service  under  a  system  whose  evils  their  submission  and  docility  had 
turned  to  their  advantage.  Had  they  not  had  too  often  the  vices  of  slavery 
with  its  virtues ;  had  not  their  intellectual  development  been  checked ;  had 
they  been  freed  without  war  and  without  the  period  of  hate  and  terror 


64  AN  AMERICAN   COMMONER. 

which  followed  it,  they  might  have  become,  without  even  temporary  re 
action,  a  highly  civilized  and  productive  people,  co-operating  industrially 
with  the  white  people  of  the  country  to  the  greatest  possible  advantage. 
As  it  was,  the  desperate  struggle  of  Civil  war  politics,  putting  them  between 
two  fires,  subjected  their  fundamental  virtues  to  a  most  crucial  test  under 
which  it  is  a  matter  of  course  that  there  should  be  shown  many  instances 
of  individual  degeneracy  to  the  original  condition  of  the  race.  It  is  a  fact, 
however,  that  the  average  of  the  race  in  1900  is,  as  it  was  in  i87o,  superior 
to  such  "civilization"  as  Lord  Kitchener  illustrated  in  founding  a  college 
at  Khartoum  immediately  after  he  had  butchered  there  by  bayonetting 
as  they  lay  on  the  field,  more  than  a  thousand  wounded  who  had  fal 
len  in  heroic  if  unintelligent  resistance  to  policies  proposed  by  English 
holders  of  fraudulent  Egyptian  bonds — representative  of  the  same  class 
who  from  1866  to  i876  deliberately  forced  on  a  dozen  great  American  com 
monwealths  issues  which  but  for  the  good  nature  of  the  negroes  and  the 
saving  sense  of  justice  in  the  white  people  would  have  made  the  south  an 
inferno.  The  possibilities  of  what  might  have  been  are  so  obvious  that  they 
are  too  repulsive  to  be  allowed  to  force  themselves  on  imagination,  but  the 
reality  itself  was  so  bad  that  for  every  section  of  the  Union  another  half 
century  of  development,  moral  and  intellectual,  will  scarcely  suffice  to  undo 
the  work  of  demoralization  begun  during  that  decade. 

When  the  organized  wealth  of  the  world  was  being  directed  through 
all  the  power  of  trained  and  highly  intellectual  fraud,  to  overthrow  Ameri 
can  institutions,  the  first  stand  against  it  was  made  by  the  northern  aboli 
tionists  of  1856  whose  radicalism,  answered  by  the  radicalism  of  secession 
ists  at  the  south  and  exaggerated  by  the  moral  cowardice  and  intellectual 
inertia  of  advocates  of  conquest  and  coercion  in  support  of  an  alleged 
manifest  destiny  had  forced  the  Civil  war. 

The  result,  however,  depended  finally  on  the  conduct  of  devoted  lovers 
of  American  institutions  among  the  former  slave-holders  of  the  south,  now 
ruined  and  proscribed.  It  doe*  them  simple  justice  to  say  that  the  Amer- 


*i 


Jfc  ^~£i 
1  A  M* 


PENNSYLVANIA  AVENUE,  WASHINGTON. 


U.  S.  TREASURY,  WASHINGTON. 


THE  THOMAS  CIRCLE  AND  STATUE,  WASHINGTON,  D.  C 


AN  AMERICAN  COMMONER.  65 

ica  of  the  future  will  owe  chiefly  to  them  the  preservation  of  whatever  shall 
remain  of  the  institutions  depending  on  the  original  constitution.  They 
will  not  be  eulogized  here.  Had  they  been  capable  in  1850  of  the  same 
self-control  and  self-repression  they  showed  as  a  class  when  driven  to  the 
wall  in  i87o;  had  they  followed  the  theories  of  the  Declaration  of  Inde 
pendence  when  Mexico  was  at  the  mercy  of  the  overwhelmingly  superior 
forces  of  the  United  States,  the  realization  of  the  possibilities  of  benefi 
cence  inherent  in  the  principles  of  American  liberty  might  not  have  been 
postponed  to  the  twentieth  century  and  the  blood  and  struggle,  the  reac 
tion  and  oppression  of  the  last  half  of  the  nineteenth  might  have  been  made 
impossible.  But  beaten  as  they  were,  ruined  as  they  were,  attacked  as  they 
were  from  all  quarters  with  all  possible  opprobrium,  they  showed  among  all 
their  failings,  the  splendid  virtues  of  fortitude,  of  unsurrendering  confi 
dence  in  the  future  and  of  loyalty  to  the  Constitution  of  i788  as  it  had  been 
interpreted  by  the  generation  which  had  transmitted  it  to  them.  They  be 
longed  to  a  class  and  to  a  generation  too  prone  to  violence,  too  impatient, 
too  apt  to  strike  first  and  hear  afterwards,  but  when  the  time  of  supreme 
trial  came  for  them,  they  showed  their  supreme  virtue.  They  could 
neither  be  bought  nor  bullied ;  and  if  in  holding  their  own  against  desperate 
odds,  they  kept  much  they  might  have  improved  themselves  by  losing,  they 
kept  the  world's  future  with  it. 


CHAPTER  VII. 

Thurman  and  Sumner  Against  "The  Man  on  Horseback."  The  Attempt  to  Align 
the  South  for  Imperialism  Fails. — The  Ideas  Represented  by  Greeley  and  Bland 
Against  the  Forces  Behind  Grant  and  Longstreet. — The  Work  of  Thurman  and 
Black  in  Checking  Imperial  Centralization  of  Power  Prepares  the  way  for  Bland. 
— The  Liberal  Republican  and  Democratic  Fusion  Movement  of  1872  Against 
Militarism  Draws  Bland  into  Politics. — How  he  came  to  be  Nominated  for  Con 
gress. — The  Influence  of  a  Missouri  Fence  Corner  in  Shaping  the  Course  of 
International  Politics. 


HE  events  of  the  last  decade  of  the  nineteenth  century  show 
that  in  i87o  Mr.  Bland  was  one  of  four  men  who  were  to  ex 
ert  a  decisive  influence  in  preventing  the  military  spirit  evoked 
by  the  war  from  destroying  civil  government.  Charles  Sum 
ner,  by  making  the  first  determined  stand  against  General  Grant's  plan  for 
the  annexation  of  San  Domingo,  directed  the  attention  of  original  Free 
soilers  and  abolitionists  to  a  danger  greater  than  any  they  could  anticipate 
from  relaxing  their  opposition  to  southern  democrats.  Allen  G.  Thurman 
was  a  Virginian  by  birth,  and  intellectually  the  heir  of  the  Virginia  school 
which,  after  the  adoption  of  the  Constitution,  had  checked  Hamilton  by 
forcing  its  amendment.  He  had  voted  for  the  Wilmot  proviso  against 
slavery  in  the  territory  acquired  by  the  Mexican  conquest.  This  vote  he 
had  cast  as  the  representative  of  an  Ohio  district,  but  he  represented  also 
the  Virginia  abolitionists  of  the  eighteenth  century,  whose  initiative  in 
the  Ordinance  of  i787  made  Ohio,  Indiana,  Illinois,  Michigan  and  Wiscon 
sin  free  states,  with  an  influence  which  the  crisis,  when  it  came,  showed 
to  be  decisive.  He  took  his  seat  in  the  United  States  Senate  on  March  4, 
1869,  and  by  joining  with  Sumner  against  Grant,  made  it  impossible  for 
the  imperialists  to  control  the  democrats  of  the  south,  and  west ;  to  create 
a  diversion  through  General  Longstreet  or  to  secure  that  tacit  assent  to 
their  policies  which  their  secret  service  agents  in  1898  described  as 


"pairing." 


66 


AN  AMERICAN  COMMONER.  67 

Horace  Greeley,  a  Whig  by  association  and  by  intellectual  habit,  was 
fundamentally  an  individualist  with  the  same  governing  sympathy  for  the 
world's  actual  producers  which  gave  Mr.  Eland's  life  its  direction.  The 
''Granger  Movement/'  for  which  Mr.  Greeley  was  so  largely  responsi 
ble,  had  the  same  intention  as  the  de-centralizing  movement  with  which 
the  Gracchi  attempted  to  save  the  Roman  republic.  Through  it  Mr. 
Greeley  set  in  motion  forces  which  were  effective  in  energizing  the  work 
done  by  Thurman  and  Jeremiah  Black  against  corporation  imperialism 
from  1 876  to  1888,  and  which  in  the  last  ten  years  of  the  century,  made 
it  possible  for  Mr.  Bland  to  force  issues  against  those  who,  in  both  parties, 
were  conspiring  to  repeat  the  tactics  of  the  Grant  administration — that  is, 
to  make  a  fundamental  and  revolutionary  attack  on  American  institutions, 
and  after  thus  exciting  intense  alarm,  to  compromise  with  the  timid  by 
demonetizing  silver,  assuring  themselves  the  continued  control  of  the  cur 
rency  and  perpetuating  their  hold  on  the  taxing  power  in  connection  with 
a  perpetuation  of  the  bonded  debt  through  schemes  of  conquest,  canal 
building,  naval  increase,  colonial  dependencies  and  anything  else  likely  to 
serve  their  purposes. 

Mr.  Bland,  who  was  to  play  so  important  a  part  in  preventing  the  work 
of  Sumner,  Greeley  and  Thurman  against  corporation  imperialism  from 
being  undone,  was,  when  the  fight  opened,  an  unknown  country  lawyer. 
He  had  returned  to  Missouri  from  California  in  i867,  and  had  begun  prac 
ticing  law  at  Rolla  with  his  brother,  Charles  C.  Bland,  afterwards  Judge 
of  the  St.  Louis  Court  of  Appeals.  This  partnership  was  dissolved  by  his 
removal  to  Lebanon  in  1869,  where  his  vigor  of  intellect,  his  fearlessness 
in  supporting  his  political  principles  and,  no  doubt,  his  freedom  from  a 
Union  or  Confederate  war  record  contributed  to  make  him  a  desirable 
congressional  candidate  for  the  democratic  and  liberal  republican  fusion 
movement,  with  which,  in  i872,  Missouri  responded  to  the  work  done  in 
the  Senate  by  Thurman  and  Sumner.  B.  Gratz  Brown  and  Carl  Schurz 
for  the  republicans,  Frank  P.  Blair  and  John  S.  Phelps  for  the  democrats 


68  AN  AMERICAN   COMMONER. 

were  its  responsible  managers  in  Missouri.  Mr.  George  W.  Bradfield  of 
Lebanon,  Missouri,  one  of  those  who  induced  Mr.  Bland  to  take  part  in 
it,  gives  this  account  of  his  entrance  into  national  politics : 

"In  October,  1869,  the  St.  Louis  and  San  Francisco  railroad  was  ex 
tended  from  Arlington  to  Lebanon,  and  with  the  extension  a  number  of 
business  men  and  their  families  came  to  Lebanon,  established  homes  and 
entered  into  various  business  pursuits.  Among  the  number  was  Richard 
P.  Bland,  attorney.  He  came  to  stay,  and  we  have  good  reason  to  know 
that  no  political  aspirations  prompted  the  step.  He  was  devoted  to  his 
profession  and  his  sole  object  was  to  secure  a  permanent  location  and 
make  his  way  in  it.  At  this  time,  party  machines  were  in  a  demoralized 
condition.  The  defeat  of  John  S.  Phelps  for  Governor  in  1868  had  dis 
couraged  the  democrats  and  the  republicans  were  divided  into  what  were 
called  'radicals'  and  'liberals/ 

The  liberals  under  the  leadership  of  Hon.  R.  W.  Fyan,  began  an 
organization  of  their  forces,  and  in  1869,  established  a  newspaper  and 
placed  the  editorial  department  in  the  hands  of  an  ex-Confederate  and  dis 
franchised  democrat.  The  battle  soon  became  interesting.  In  i87o  the 
liberals  made  a  proposition  to  the  democrats  to  take  the  fight  off  their 
hands — the  democrats  to  give  them  entire  control  of  state  matters,  re 
taining  for  themselves  the  control  of  local  affairs.  The  proposition  was 
accepted,  carried  out  in  good  faith,  and  culminated,  after  a  bitter  fight,  in 
the  election  of  B.  Gratz  Brown  for  governor  by  a  majority  of  41,089  votes, 
the  democrats  having  a  majority  in  both  branches  of  the  legislature. 

In  this  contest,  at  the  solicitation  of  democrats  and  liberals,  R.  P. 
Bland  entered  politics  as  a  democrat  and  took  a  vigorous  part  in  the  cam 
paign. 

The  success  of  the  liberal  movement  in  Missouri  in  i87o  had  at 
tracted  the  attention  of  the  whole  country  and  in  the  "presidential  year," 
1 872,  democratic  organs  urged  that  the  same  policy  should  be  pursued  in 
the  national  campaign.  In  the  national  democratic  convention  held  at 
Baltimore  the  policy  was  accordingly  adopted  by  the  nomination  of  Horace 
Greeley  for  president  and  B.  Gratz  Brown  for  vice-president — both  liberals. 

In  the  meantime  Congress,  in  apportioning  Representatives  among  the 
States  under  the  census  of  i87o,  gave  Missouri  one  additional  representa 
tive.  The  members  of  Congress  from  Missouri  though  pleased  with  the 
gain  of  one  member,  were  satisfied  with  existing  districts  and  did  not  wish 
them  disturbed. 

The  legislature  which  had  the  matter  in  charge  was  equal  to  the  occa 
sion.  They  determined  to  make  the  new  district  out  of  the  counties  which 


AN  AMERICAN  COMMONER.  69 

had  none  of  the  sitting  members  or  old  democratic  leaders  in  them.  To 
this  end  they  established  what  they  named  the  Fifth  district,  composed  of 
Jefferson,  Franklin,  Gasconade,  Osage,  Maries,  Crawford,  Phelps,  Pu- 
laski,  Wright,  Ozark,  Douglas,  Howell,  Texas,  Dent,  Shannon  and  La- 
clede — sixteen  counties,  which  in  i87o  had  given  Brown  for  governor 
4,432  majority. 

The  district  had  a  picturesque  appearance  on  the  map  of  the  state. 
Two  of  the  counties  were  on  the  Missouri  river;  one  on  the  Missouri 
river  whose  boundary  line  extended  to  the  boundary  line  of  three  counties 
in  Illinois;  two  on  the  boundary  line  of  Arkansas,  and  two  others  were 
but  a  few  hours'  ride  from  the  Indian  Territory  and  the  state  of  Kansas. 

As  soon  as  the  formation  of  the  new  district  was  made  known,  the 
selection  of  a  candidate  to  represent  it  became  the  chief  topic  of  conver 
sation  among  its  people,  and  a  number  of  names  were  suggested.  In  La- 
clede  county,  the  home  of  Mr.  Bland,  Josiah  Ivey  was  the  first  who  sug 
gested  his  name  to  the  editor  of  the  "home  organ."  He  and  the  editor 
went  accordingly  to  Mr.  Bland's  office  to  confer  with  him  on  the  subject. 
The  announcement  of  the  object  of  our  visit  took  him  by  surprise,  but  it 
was  finally  agreed  that  a  representative  committee  of  democrats  and  lib 
erals  should  be  appointed  to  confer  with  him.  The  active  leaders  of  both 
parties  were  consulted  and  selected  Capt.  J.  T.  Talliaferro,  Josiah  Ivey, 
Harrison  Attaway,  Hugh  McGowin  and  G.  W.  Bradfield  as  the  conference 
committee.  They  called  on  Mr.  Bland,  and  after  a  full  conference  he 
agreed  to  announce  himself  as  a  candidate  for  representative  subject  to  the 
action  of  the  democratic  congressional  convention  at  St.  James. 

A  joint  convention  of  liberals  and  democrats  of  Laclede  county  was 
held  to  appoint  delegates  to  the  congressional  convention  of  the  Fifth 
district  and  Messrs.  Harrison  Attaway,  J.  T.  Talliaferro  and  George  W. 
Bradfield,  democrats,  were  chosen  as  delegates,  with  Messrs.  David  Stein 
berg,  R.  C.  Barrows  and  Alfred  Case,  liberals,  as  alternates. 

The  delegates  and  alternates,  and  a  number  of  outsiders,  the  most 
prominent  among  whom  were  Messrs.  Hugh  McGowin,  R.  P.  Goodall  and 
Josiah  Ivey  from  Laclede  county,  reached  St.  James  the  evening  before 
the  convention  was  to  be  held.  They  found  the  opposition  there  in  full 
force,  occupying  as  headquarters  every  room  that  could  be  obtained. 

It  was  soon  ascertained  that  all  the  candidates  were  on  hand;  that 
Bland  was  in  the  lead;  that  his  friends  were  there  for  the  single  purpose 
of  nominating  him  and  that  they  had  no  second  choice.  As  they  had  no 
place  to  meet  to  perfect  a  temporary  organization,  it  was  finally  decided 
that  when  night  came  they  would  meet  in  the  corner  of  a  rail  fence  some 
little  distance  from  any  highway  and  place  sentinels  to  keep  off  intruders. 


70  AN  AMERICAN   COMMONER. 

His  delegates  promptly  met  at  the  appointed  place.  Organizing  for  pru 
dential  reasons,  they  selected  W.  H.  McGowin  of  Howell  county  as  tem 
porary  chairman  of  the  convention  and  unanimously  resolved  that  the 
nomination  of  Mr.  Bland  should  be  made  by  a  delegate  of  one  of  the  coun 
ties  which  had  no  candidate  in  the  field — Mr.  Bland  himself  to  select  the 
delegate. 

The  Methodist  church  was  tendered  the  convention  for  holding  its 
meetings,  and  at  the  time  named  in  the  call  the  delegates  and  alternates 
met  in  the  church  in  full  force — every  county  being  fully  represented. 
Chairman  McGowin  called  the  meeting  to  order,  briefly  explained  its  object 
and  appointed  the  committees.  After  a  recess,  the  committee  on  credentials 
made  their  report  which  was  unanimously  adopted.  The  committee  on 
organization  recommended  Doctor  John  Hyor  of  Dent  county  as  chairman 
of  the  convention,  which  was  unanimously  adopted.  The  Doctor  was 
escorted  to  the  chair  and  thanked  the  convention  for  the  honor  conferred 
upon  him.  The  Bland  delegates  selected  Harrison  Attaway  to  see  that 
the  Bland  men  were  on  hand  at  roll  call  and  George  W.  Bradfield  to  tally 
the  votes  cast. 

On  the  roll  call  of  counties  for  nomination  of  candidates  for  Con 
gress,  Col.  Crews,  of  Franklin  county ;  Senator  Morse  of  Jefferson  county ; 
Colonel  Wingo  of  Dent  county;  Ed.  Seay  and  Doctor  Headlee  of  Phelps 
county,  and  J.  H.  Graham  of  Wright  county  were  put  in  nomination. 
When  the  county  of  Laclede  was  called,  Elder  Michal  Johnson  of  Maries 
county,  an  ex-Confederate  colonel,  arose  and  nominated  Mr.  Bland, 
George  W.  Bradfield  of  Laclede  county  seconding  him. 

After  two  or  three  ballots,  in  which  Mr.  Bland  took  and  kept 
the  lead,  it  was  apparent  that  the  opposition  could  not  form  a  combina 
tion  and  that  by  a  determined  effort  the  Bland  forces  could  win.  Attaway 
had  prepared  for  the  effort.  He  and  Bradfield  had  agreed  that  when  the 
votes  cast  reached  the  point  where  the  solid  vote  of  Maries  county  would 
decide  the  contest,  Bradfield  was  to  give  a  certain  signal.  The  ballot 
commenced  and  progressed  with  but  little  change  until  the  county  of 
Shannon  voted  for  Bland.  The  critical  point  was  reached,  the  signal  was 
given,  Maries  county  voted  solid  for  Bland  and  he  was  nominated. 

The  republicans  nominated  Hon.  Andrew  J.  Seay,  against  him.  Bland 
made  a  vigorous  campaign,  visited  all  the  counties  in  the  district,  roused 
the  democrats  and  carried  the  district  by  1,154  majority.*" 

The  unadorned  simplicity  of  Mr.  Bradfield's  narrative  can  not  fail 
to  commend  itself  to  the  Livy  who  shall  study  the  Rise,  as  well  as  the 

*From  reminiscences  contributed  for  this  work  by  Mr.  George  W.  Bradfield. 


AN  AMERICAN  COMMONER.  7 1 

Gibbon  who  shall  write  the  Decline  and  Fall,  of  the  "Anglo-Saxon 
Empire."  He  will  see,  if  he  has  learned  the  art  of  reading  between  the 
lines,  that  the  men  who  managed  Mr.  Eland's  entrance  to  public  life, 
though  they  had  never  been  to  London  or  Berlin  in  their  lives,  had  savoir 
faire  enough  as  international  diplomats  to  use  a  moonlight  meeting  in  the 
corner  of  a  Missouri  rail  fence  to  set  in  motion  international  forces  which 
Lord  Salisbury  and  Baron  Rothschild  have  not  yet  demonstrated  their 
ability  to  control. 


CHAPTER  VIII. 

The  Superiority  of  "Business"  to  Party. — Plutocratic  Attempts  to  Provide  Issues 
for  Both  Parties. — The  Object  of  "Expansion"  Under  Grant  Accomplished  in 
the  Demonetisation  of  Silver  and  the  Control  of  the  Currency. — Sumner  De 
nounces  Imperialism  and  Forces  an  Open  Debate  on  the  Annexation  of  the 
West  Indies. — "A  Dance  of  Blood"  Proposed  by  the  Speculative  and  Non-Pro- 
ductive  Classes. — How  History  Repeated  Itself  in  1898. — General  Grant's  Argu 
ments  for  Imperialism  Used  Against  Bland  by  Imperialists  in  Missouri. — Thur- 
man's  Speech  Against  "Expansion." 


HE  immediate  object  of  the  movement  for  imperialism  under 
Grant  was  attained.  The  national  debt  was  perpetuated;  its 
holders  through  the  demonetization  of  silver  and  the  substitu 
tion  of  notes  based  on  the  debt  and  inflating  it,  were  given 
control  of  the  currency;  and  the  control  of  the  taxing  power  was  per 
petuated  in  the  hands  of  the  class  which  had  been  enriched  by  the  restric 
tion  in  distribution,  the  artificial  scarcity  and  the  unnatural  demand  in 
cident  to  the  destructiveness  of  civil  war. 

Those  who  accomplished  this  were  only  incidentally  partisans.  It  is 
their  habit  to  work  through  both  parties  and  they  did  not  cease  to  do  this 
when,  as  a  result  of  their  plans,  the  republican  party  was  unexpectedly 
divided  and  issues  forced  which  worked  an  almost  complete  re-alignment 
of  both  parties. 

The  issue  was  forced  in  the  Senate  on  December  20,  i87i,  when 
Charles  Sumner  openly  broke  with  the  Grant  administration,  declaring 
that  it  was  attempting  "to  commit  Congress  to  a  dance  of  blood."* 

The  Senate  had  already  rejected  a  "treaty"  negotiated  between  Or- 
ville  Babcock  and  a  "General"  Baez,  who  had  proclaimed  himself  and  sev 
eral  of  his  friends  the  government  of  San  Domingo  and  had  been  "recog 
nized"  for  the  purposes  of  the  treaty.  The  subject  was  revived  by  a 
resolution  introduced  by  Senator  Morton  of  Indiana,  providing  for  a  com- 

*See  Congressional  Record,  December  21, 1871. 

72 


AN  AMERICAN  COMMONER.  73 

mission  to  visit  San  Domingo  and  by  a  resolution  of  Mr.  Sumner  calling 
on  the  president  for  information  "to  show  what  European  powers,  if  any, 
propose  to  acquire  jurisdiction  over  the  island." 

Senator  Edmunds,  speaking  for  the  administration  and  outlining  its 
policy,  proceeded  to  feel  his  way  to  the  temper  of  the  Senate,  seeking  to 
discover  what  it  would  do  when  acting  openly  on  a  proposition  to  "resent 
foreign  interference"  in  the  whole  of  the  West  Indian  archipelago.  Af 
ter  explaining  that  it  was  a  distinctively  American  doctrine  not  to  permit 
an  enlargement  of  European  influences  in  the  West  Indies,  he  proceeded  to 
enlarge  the  scope  of  the  issue,  before  the  Senate,  from  San  Domingo  to  the 
West  Indies  as  a  whole  and  incidentally  to  Central  America.  "Certainly," 
he  said,  "if  there  be  any  distinctively  American  doctrine  upon  which  the 
people  are  supposed  to  be  a  unit,  it  is  that  we  shall  not  permit  European  in 
terference  or  aggression  (beyond  existing  conditions  which  the  faith  of 
treaties  and  public  law  do  not  permit  us  to  interfere  with)  or  the  enlarge 
ment  of  the  domain  of  that  species  of  interference  in  governments  in  this 
great  tropical  archipelago,  of  which  I  have  spoken.  Therefore,  infor 
mation  in  respect  to  any  of  these  islands,  in  respect  to  their  capacity  to 
support  a  free,  industrious  and  self-governing  population  is  of  interest  to 
the  people  of  the  United  States.  I  say  this  with  reference  to  Cuba  as  well 
as  San  Domingo ;  Hayti,  the  other  end  of  the  island,  as  well  as  Dominica, 
St.  Thomas  or  whatever  the  island  may  be — as  to  the  people  who  inhabit  all 
those  islands,  there  must  always  be  a  centering  and  absorbing  interest — 
they  taken  as  a  whole  lying  in  that  great  Mediterranean  sea  of  the  Western 
hemisphere,  connecting  us  with  the  Isthmus  of  Panama  and  our  great 
coast  on  the  Pacific." 

This  utterance,  so  eminently  characteristic  of  Mr.  Edmunds  in  what  it 
suppressed  as  in  what  it  suggested,  evoked  an  instant  and  characteristic 
reply  from  Sumner. 

Bold  intellectually  and  morally;  honest  in  his  methods  of  thought, 
candid  in  expression,  despising  fraud  in  all  its  forms,  a  representative  New 


74  AN  AMERICAN  COMMONER. 

England  gentleman  of  the  Brahmin  class,  intellectually  and  .socially  an 
aristocrat;  but  politically  as  extreme  in  his  republicanism  as  Danton  or 
Desmoulins,  the  Senator  from  Massachusetts  justified  his  whole  career 
to  posterity  by  his  answer.  It  was  he  who,  when  the  conquest  and  dis 
memberment  of  Mexico  were  about  to  be  undertaken,  had  delivered  the 
appeal  for  peace  and  justice  which,  under  the  title  he  gave  it,  "The  True 
Grandeur  of  Nations,"  will  be  his  best  monument  for  posterity.  It  was 
he  again  who,  at  the  crisis  of  the  Kansas-Nebraska  debate,  had  expressed 
his  contempt  for  Stephen  A.  Douglas  in  terms  which  almost  exhaust  the 
capacity  of  decent  English  for  vituperation.  And  now  the  third  time, 
at  the  close  of  his  career,  he  was  tested.  The  real  issue  in  each  case  was 
the  same.  As  it  was  Douglas,  who  in  1850-60,  proposed  an  era  of  con 
quest  and  violence  abroad  to  avoid  the  settlement  of  domestic  issues,  so 
it  was  Grant  now — Grant  as  president  with  complete  control  of  party 
machinery,  and  power  to  drive  out  of  politics  any  republican  who  opposed 
him. 

No  one  knew  this  better  than  Sumner.  But  he  had  the  gentleman's 
scorn  of  cheating  and  cowardice,  and  if  the  pride  of  the  gentleman — the 
indignation  he  feels  at  all  the  mean  and  knavish  forms  of  injustice  and 
oppression — could  bring  salvation  to  the  world,  Sumner  might  have  been 
the  herald  of  a  new  and  higher  civilization  as  he  rose  to  reply  to  Edmunds. 

"Mr.  President,"  he  said,  "the  resolution  before  the  Senate  commits 
Congress  to  a  dance  of  blood.  It  is  a  new  step  in  a  measure  of  violence. 
Several  steps  have  already  been  taken  and  Congress  is  now  summoned 
to  take  another ....  Sir,  others  may  do  as  they  please.  Others  may  accept 
this  policy.  I  will  not. . .  .1  object  to  this  proposition  because  it  is  a  new 
stage  in  a  measure  of  violence  which,  so  far  as  it  has  been  maintained,  has 
been  propped  by  violence.  I  use  strong  language  but  only  what  the  occa 
sion  requires.  As  a  Senator,  as  a  patriot,  I  can  not  see  my  country  suffer 
in  its  good  name  without  an  effort  to  save  it.  The  negotiation  for  annex 
ation  began  with  a  person  known  as  Buenventura  Baez.  All  the  evidence 


AN  AMERICAN  COMMONER.  75 

official  and  unofficial,  shows  him  to  be  a  political  jockey. . .  .Ever  since  the 
signature  of  the  treaty,  and  especially  ever  since  its  rejection,  Baez  has 
been  sustained  in  power  by  the  presence  of  our  naval  force.  Such  I 
aver  to  be  the  fact.  I  state  it  with  all  the  responsibility  of  my  position 
and  with  full  conviction  of  its  truth.  I  ask  you  to  do  as  I  have  done — 
to  go  to  the  State  department  and  Navy  department  and  read  the  reports 
there  on  file ....  Baez  has  been  treated  as  you  fear  Bismarck  may  treat 
Louis  Napoleon.  You  call  him  president.  They  call  him  down  there, 
dictator.  Better  call  him  emperor  and  then  the  parallel  will  be  complete. 
He  is  sustained  in  power  by  the  government  of  the  United  States  that  he 
may  betray  his  country.  Such  is  the  fact  and  I  challenge  any  senator 
to  deny  it." 

This  speech  is  as  clearly  responsible  for  forcing  the  liberal  republican 
bolt  of  1 872  as  that  of  George  William  Curtis  in  the  Chicago  convention 
was  for  the  "Mugwump"  bolt  against  Elaine,  or  as  Bland's  "Parting  of 
the  Ways"  speech  was  for  the  issues  of  1896  against  foreign  control  of 
American  mints  and  the  American  treasury.  The  power  of  a  single  man, 
accustomed  to  use  his  intellect  as  the  vehicle  of  his  moral  force,  has  sel 
dom  had  more  adequate  illustration  than  in  these  three  speeches,  delivered 
by  men  so  unlike  in  everything  except  their  fundamental  rectitude  of  pur 
pose  and  their  deep-seated  detestation  of  knavery. 

Sumner  was  at  once  attacked  by  Senator  Morton  of  Indiana,  who,  as 
he  became  possessed  by  the  subject,  showed  himself  incapable  of  the  indi 
rections  and  suppressions  which  had  characterized  Mr.  Edmunds.  "Mr. 
President,"  he  said,  "the  annexation  of  San  Domingo  will  come,  I  proph 
esy  here  to-night  that  it  will  come.  And  with  it  the  annexation  of  Cuba 
and  Puerto  Rico." 

This  bold  declaration  left  nothing  to  the  imagination.  Taken  in  con 
nection  with  that  of  Mr.  Edmunds,  it  showed  that  the  imperialism  which 
sought  control  of  the  taxing  power  and  the  treasury  under  Grant  was 
identical  in  methods  with  that  which  Mr.  Bland  opposed  in  Washington 


76  AN  AMERICAN  COMMONER. 

and  in  Missouri  in  1897,  1898  and  1899. 

In  1898  when  it  was  obvious  that  a  primary  object  of  the  expansion 
movement  was  the  refunding  of  the  national  debt  as  the  base  of  a  corpora 
tion  paper  currency  substituted  for  coin  and  coin  certificates,  Mr.  Bland 
found  himself  opposed  in  Missouri  by  political  experts  working  to  force 
the  "expansion"  movement,  as  was  done  under  Grant,  so  as  to  withdraw 
public  attention  from  the  workings  of  the  plan  for  treasury  control  and 
financial  revolution.  The  issues  forced  ostentatiously  against  Mr.  Bland 
were  the  acquisition  of  Puerto  Rico  by  "force  of  arms,"  the  annexation  of 
Cuba  by  garrison  control,  an  indefinite  increase  of  the  navy  and  the  digging 
of  the  trans-isthmian  canal. 

At  the  time  the  "expansion  debate"  was  forced  on  the  country  under 
Grant,  it  is  no  doubt  a  fact  that  the  bill  to  demonetize  silver  and  control 
the  bonded  debt  and  the  paper  currency  of  the  country  had  already  been 
drawn,  and  passed  backwards  and  forwards  in  duplicate  between  New 
York  and  London.  Three  years  after  the  expansion  movement  began, 
the  demonetization  bill  passed  Congress  while  the  "new  issues"  were  being 
fiercely  debated.  Mr.  Bland  entered  national  politics  during  that  contest, 
and  two  years  after  its  renewal  in  1898 — a  year  after  he  had  made  his 
last  stand  in  opposing  it — the  new  demonetization  bill  passed  and  the  par 
allel  was  completed — even  to  the  loud  denunciation  of  their  own  work,  to 
which  agents  of  the  conspiracy  resorted  in  both  cases. 

While  this  is  unmistakably  apparent  now,  it  could  not  have  been 
intelligible  in  i87o  to  any  beyond  a  select  circle  of  capitalists  and  their 
confidential  dependants  in  politics.  It  is  not  probable  that  knowledge  of 
it  was  sufficiently  definite  in  the  mind  of  Allen  G.  Thurman  to  have  been 
one  of  the  factors  influencing  him  in  supporting  Sumner  against  Grant. 
It  was  natural  that  he  should  do  so,  not  merely  because  he  was  a  partisan 
and  it  was  an  opportunity  for  occupying  an  impregnable  position,  but 
because  he  was  fundamentally  an  honest  man — honest  intellectually  and 
practically,  accustomed  to  making  the  fundamental  principles  of  morality 


AN  AMERICAN  COMMONER.  77 

the  standard  of  his  action.  He  was  a  democrat  and  a  conservative  while 
Mr.  Sumner  was  a  federalist  and  a  radical,  but  both  were  courageous  and 
honest  men.  Being  so,  they  understood  each  other  and  worked  together 
to  defeat  what  both  saw  was  an  intended  "Coup  d'Etat."  Thurman's 
rejoinder  to  the  attacks  on  Sumner  from  the  republican  side  showed  a  deep 
insight  into  the  meaning  of  the  movement  of  American  politics  during 
the  century.  It  was  unanswerable. 

"Mr.  President,  I  shall  occupy  very  little  of  your  time,"  he  said  in 
opening.  "My  purpose  in  rising  is  chiefly  to  put  on  record,  in  the  fewest 
possible  words,  the  grounds  of  my  opposition  to  the  annexation  of  San 
Domingo,  and  rather  to  state  propositions  than  to  make  an  argument. 
But  before  I  do  that,  I  wish  to  notice  remarks  which  have  fallen  from 
senators  in  the  course  of  this  debate.  A  stranger  who  should  have  come 
into  this  chamber  in  the  last  two  hours,  unacquainted  with  the  subject 
under  discussion  and  listening  to  the  speeches  that  have  been  made,  would 
naturally  have  come  to  the  conclusion  that  it  is  once  more  the  field  of  an 
impeachment  trial — that  at  this  time  it  was  not  a  president  of  the  United 
States  who  was  being  arraigned,  but  a  senator  of  the  United  States,  the 
senator  from  Massachusetts.  The  senator  from  Michigan  (Mr.  Chandler) 
was  pleased  to  tell  the  senator  from  Massachusetts  that  when  he  came  to 
train  this  little  body  of  democrats  here,  it  would  not  be  a  very  difficult 
undertaking — that  there  were  not  so  many  of  them  but  that  he  would  be 
able  to  dress  the  line  without  great  military  genius.  When  the  senator 
made  the  remark  my  memory  took  me  back  eighteen  years  to  the  memor 
able  year  1852.  There  was  a  presidential  election  that  year.  There  were 
two  candidates — the  whig  candidate,  General  Winfield  Scott;  the  demo 
cratic  candidate,  General  Franklin  Pierce.  They  stood  upon  platforms 
that  in  one  particular  had  no  essential  difference  whatever — platforms  that 
have  been  proclaimed  ever  since  the  year  1861  to  have  been  pro-slavery — 
platforms  that  denounced  in  almost  the  same  language  and  with  precisely 
the  same  meaning  any  agitation  whatever  of  the  subject  of  slavery  or  the 


78  AN  AMERICAN  COMMONER. 

abolition  thereof — which  denounced  it  as  unpatriotic  in  anybody  whatso 
ever  in  any  part  of  this  republic  to  seek  to  disturb,  by  any  agitation  whatso 
ever,  that  status  of  slavery  which  existed  in  the  southern  states.  Upon 
that  platform  the  two  great  parties  went  to  battle  in  that  year  1852. 
There  was  one  man  in  the  Senate  of  the  United  States  that  day — and  but 
one — who  repudiated  both  platforms  and  would  stand  upon  neither — 
who  repudiated  both  candidates  and  would  vote  for  neither.  That  man 
was  Charles  Sumner.  I  see  him  standing  in  the  senate  then  without  a 
single  follower.  He  had  no  ten  men,  the  number  of  democrats  here  now, 
to  dress  into  line  then.  He  had  no  one  but  himself.  And  I  have  lived 
to  see  the  day  when  sixty  senators  of  the  republican  party,  the  senator 
from  Michigan  among  them,  were  following  in  his  footsteps  with  the  most 
implicit  obedience.  I  have  seen  that  which  I  never  expected  to  see.  I 
have  seen  the  man  who  repudiated  your  candidate  of  1852  who  spit  upon 
your  platform  then,  at  the  head  of  your  column  for  nearly  ten  years  in  the 
Senate  of  the  United  States.  Where  then  were  you  who  now  talk  of 
nothing  but  freedom  ?  Where  then  were  you  who  now  boast  of  the  enfran 
chisement  of  the  African  race?  Where  then  were  you  who  are  now  so 
ready  to  denounce  any  man  that  ever  stood  up  for  the  institutions  of  the 
country  or  at  least  sought  to  prevent  the  country  from  being  ruined  by 
their  disturbance?  Where  were  you,  republican  senators,  in  1852,  when 
the  senator  from  Massachusetts  stood,  if  not  solitary,  at  least  alone? 
Where  were  you  ?  One  half,  or  nearly  so,  voting  for  Franklin  Pierce  and 
the  rest  for  Winneld  Scott." 


CHAPTER   IX. 

The  Republican  Party  Revolutionized  under  Grant. — Surnner  is  Driven  out  of  it. — 
Seward,  Greeley  and  Sumner  Die  Heart-Broken.— Elaine's  Tribute  to  Sumner. — 
The  use  of  Subconscious  Memory  in  Politics. — Militant  Commercialism  Called 
to  Account  for  the  Fall  of  Seward,  Sumner  and  Greeley. 

N  INTELLECT  and  in  moral  force,  Sumner  and  Seward  rank 
with  Lincoln  as  the  three  greatest  men  among  the  founders  of 
the  republican  party.  Horace  Greeley,  who  comes  next 
after  them,  is  next  only  after  a  long  interval.  It  is  a  fact  of 
much  historical  significance  that  all  three  died  under  Grant's  administra 
tion — repudiated  by  the  party  they  had  founded,  and  in  disgrace  as  far  as 
it  could  disgrace  them.  Seward  died  at  Auburn,  New  York,  October  10, 
1 872;  Greeley  at  his  country  place  in  Westchester  county,  New  York, 
November  29,  i872,  and  Sumner  at  Washington,  March  n,  1874. 

The  details  of  Greeley's  death  are  sufficiently  well  known  and  it  is  only 
pertinent  here  to  add  to  them  that  the  charge  of  mental  incapacity,  pre 
ferred  against  him  when  he  was  being  forced  out  of  the  control  of  the  paper 
he  had  founded,  would  have  been  sufficiently  proven,  in  the  minds  of  some 
New  York  and  London  capitalists,  by  his  stubborn  refusal  to  support  their 
policies  and  by  his  "agrarianism."  It  is  not  infrequently  the  habit  of 
political  managers  of  the  class  Mr.  Greeley  antagonized,  to  prefer 
the  charge  of  mental  aberration  against  those  they  can  not  control — and 
they  are  not  rendered  the  less,  but  rather  the  more,  prone  to  do  so  from 
the  fact  that  they  themselves  are  often  victims  of  hysteroid  diseases  of  will 
and  judgment,  manifesting  the  chronic  nervous  disorders  which  are  inci 
dent  to  ungoverned  appetites  and  violent  desires  gratified  at  the  expense 
both  of  individual  well  being  and  the  rights  of  others.  It  was  by  men  of 
this  class  that  Mr.  Bland  was  habitually  assailed  as  "a  crank." 

The  small  but  powerful  class  which  decreed  that  Seward,  Greeley  and 

79 


8o  AN  AMERICAN  COMMONER. 

Sumner  should  be  driven  out  of  politics  has  no  such  moral  reservations  and 
limitations  as  govern  the  normal  man.  It  has  little  hesitation  in  sacrificing 
human  life  at  wholesale  or  retail  for  commercial  advantage — to  keep  up 
the  price  of  corporation  stocks  or  to  prevent  their  own  control  of  money 
and  trade  from  being  alienated.  "The  red  republicans"  of  the  Reign  of 
Terror  in  France  illustrated  a  similar  enfranchisement  of  highly  developed 
intellect  from  moral  restraint.  They  reasoned  that  in  a  single  war 
planned  by  financiers  and  holders  of  governmental  privileges,  from 
100,000  to  500,000  lives  had  sometimes  been  deliberately  sacrificed  in 
attaining  an  object  which  the  statesmanship  thus  illustrated  had  concluded 
to  be  desirable.  Hence  the  Terrorists  argued,  that  if  by  cutting  off  in  a 
year  the  heads  of  several  thousand  of  their  most  pronounced  opponents, 
they  could  establish  their  own  theories  of  liberty  and  justice,  the  world 
would  be  greatly  the  gainer. 

Such  reasoning,  however  logical  it  may  be  from  its  premises,  is  cer 
tainly  a  symptom  of  moral  insanity  and  no  intellectual  flexibility  which 
accompanies  it  can  prevent  its  reaction  upon  itself.  In  1899  and  1900 
when  the  questions  of  the  Greeley  campaign  again  recurred,  the  same 
symptoms  showed  themselves  as  a  class  disease,  illustrated  in  the  use  of 
the  United  States  army  "to  move  the  hemp  crop"* — the  moving  consisting 
of  a  sudden  attack  on  its  producers  and  the  killing  of  a  sufficient  number  of 
them  in  their  fields  through  the  use  of  the  latest  improved  projectiles,  to 
make  the  rest  willing  to  abandon  or  surrender  their  product.  That  the 
men  who  are  accustomed  thus  to  act,  consider  such  processes  normal  and 
reasonable  is  probable,  but  their  opinions  are  not  always  fully  concurred  in 
even  by  their  own  political  associates. 

Next  to  Sumner  and  Seward,  James  G.  Elaine  ranks  as  the  greatest 
intellect  of  the  later  republican  party.  Had  he  been  governed  by  the 
high  purposes  of  Seward  or  the  moral  inflexibility  of  Sumner,  he  might 
have  been  greater  than  either — greater  indeed  than  any  other  statesman 

*See  Associated  Press  report  from  Washington  and  Manila.    December  to  March,  1899-1900. 


W.  M.  STEWART. 


FRANCIS  M.  COCKRELL. 


ROGER  Q.  MILLS. 


JOHN  SHERMAN. 


AN  AMERICAN  COMMONER.  8 1 

of  the  Civil  war  period.  Naturally  magnanimous,  a  lover  of  justice  and  a 
hater  of  oppression  by  instinct,  he  revolted  against  the  policies  of  which 
Sumner  was  the  victim,  and  although  he  did  not  have  the  stern  force  of 
character  to  stand  as  Sumner  stood,  he  admired  him  greatly  and  finally 
put  on  record  his  vindication. 

"The  opening  of  the  Forty-second  Congress  on  the  fourth  of  March, 
1 87 1,  was  disfigured  by  an  act  of  grave  injustice,"  writes  Mr.  Elaine.* 
"Charles  Sumner  was  deposed  from  the  chairmanship  of  the  committee  on 
Foreign  Relations — a  position  he  had  held  continuously  since  the  repub 
lican  party  gained  control  of  the  Senate.  The  cause  of  his  displacement 
may  be  found  in  the  angry  contentions  to  which  the  annexation  of  San 
Domingo  gave  rise.  Mr.  Sumner 's  opposition  to  that  project  was  intense 
and  his  words  carried  with  them  what  was  construed  as  a  personal  affront 
to  the  President  of  the  United  States — though  never  so  intended  by  the 
Massachusetts  senator The  removal  of  Mr.  Sumner  had  been  de 
termined  by  a  caucus  of  republican  senators  and  never  was  the  power  of 

the  caucus  more  wrongfully  applied For  his  fidelity  to  principle  and 

his  boldness  in  asserting  the  truth  at  an  earlier  day,  Mr.  Sumner  was 
struck  down  in  the  Senate  chamber  by  a  weapon  in  the  hand  of  a  political 
foe.  It  was  impossible  to  anticipate  that  fifteen  years  later,  he  would  be 
even  more  cruelly  struck  down  in  the  Senate  by  the  members  of  the  party 
he  had  done  so  much  to  establish.  The  cruelty  was  greater  in  the  latter 
case,  as  anguish  of  spirit  is  greater  than  suffering  of  body.  In  both 
instances  Mr.  Sumner's  bearing  was  distinguished  by  dignity  and  magna 
nimity.  He  gave  utterance  to  no  complaints,  and  silently  submitted  to  the 
unjustifiable  wrong  of  which  he  was  the  victim.  That  nothing  might  be 
lacking  in  the  extraordinary  character  of  the  final  scene  of  his  deposition, 
the  democratic  senators  recorded  themselves  against  the  consummation 
of  the  injustice.  They  had  no  co-operation  from  the  republicans.  The 
caucus  dictation  was  so  strong  that  discontented  republicans  merely  re 
frained  from  voting." 

As  in  Sumner's  action,  checking  Grant,  we  have  the  explanation  of  the 
"liberal  republican"  movement  which  made  a  radical  change  in  the  republi 
can  party  and  repulsed  militant  commercialism  for  the  time  being,  so  in 
this  expression  from  Mr.  Elaine  appears,  if  only  vaguely,  the  deep,  under- 

*Twenty  Years  in  Congress,  pp.  503-6. 

6 


82  AN  AMERICAN  COMMONER. 

lying  causes  which  worked  to  defeat  the  Grant  third  term  movement  of 
1880. 

It  has  been  sometimes  assumed  that  Mr.  Elaine  was  moved  to  antagon 
ize  the  third  term  movement  merely  by  his  own  ambition,  but  the  reasoning 
which  leads  to  such  conclusions  is  inadequate.  Even  in  men  who  are 
weakest  or  most  timid  morally,*  the  sense  of  justice  is  a  determining  fac 
ulty — one  of  the  great  faculties  separating  men  from  the  lower  animals. 
The  other  is  memory.  Animals,  of  the  orders  lower  than  mankind,  are 
certainly  able  to  reason  at  any  given  time  on  any  given  set  of  conditions 
to  the  full  extent  of  all  their  faculties,  but  their  faculties  are  severely 
limited  by  the  limitations  of  their  memories.  As  memory  increases,  as 
consequently  the  intellect  of  which  it  is  a  faculty  becomes  able  to  store  up 
and  co-ordinate  a  larger  number  of  facts  from  past  observation  and  ex 
perience,  the  reason  increases  in  its  power  of  analysis  and  synthesis.  The 
influence  of  the  individual  who  approximates  the  norm  of  moral  sanity 
increases  proportionately. 

This  is  perhaps  the  most  important  single  fact  of  politics.  The  bar 
barian,  accustomed  to  gratify  his  appetite  at  once,  and  habitually  unwilling 
to  deny  himself  the  immediate  indulgence  of  his  passions  of  acquisitiveness 
or  destructiveness,  can  think  only  of  the  immediate  advantage  which  he 
sees  it  is  possible  for  him  to  take  of  those  who  are  not  on  guard  against 
his  superior  cunning  and  his  lack  of  self  restraint.  For  the  immediate 
advantage  which  he  can  take  of  those  who  are  unprepared  to  resist  him, 
he  sacrifices  not  only  their  rights  but  his  own  future  well-being  and  often 
if  not  always  his  ultimate  safety. 

In  the  memory  of  every  one  who  is  higher  in  the  scale  of  civilization 
man  those  who  use  their  advantage  of  others  for  injustice,  it  is  a  law  of  the 
evolution  of  mind  that  the  sense  of  this  injustice  must  inhere  with  a  tenacity 
bearing  a  definite  relation  to  the  moral  and  intellectual  strength  of  the 
individual.  In  such  minds  the  sense  of  justice  operates  through  memory 


*Old  English,  "weakedest;"  Modern  English,  "wickedest." 


AN  AMERICAN  COMMONER.  83 

with  cumulative  force  in  behalf  of  others,  and  at  every  great  crisis  of 
politics  they  are  impelled  by  all  their  own  essential  subconscious  forces  to 
use  for  the  benefit  of  those  not  so  strong  as  themselves,  the  slowly  accumu 
lating  force  of  will  which  they  have  exerted  in  the  condemnation  of  acts  of 
injustice  they  lacked  the  strength  of  will  or  the  ability  to  prevent.  Even 
in  men  whose  wills  are  weakest,  the  memory  has  the  same  inevitable  ten 
dency  to  reinforce  and  make  efficient  the  sense  of  justice.  They  may  not 
be  energized  by  the  sincerity  of  Bland,  the  moral  sturdiness  of  Thurman  or 
the  boldness  of  Sumner,  but  unless  they  are  hopelessly  corrupt,  their  mem 
ories  are  working  ceaselessly,  above  or  below  the  level  of  their  conscious 
ness,  to  impel  them  to  a  just  and  at  last  decisive  judgment  of  the  crimes 
which  are  inevitably  incident  to  the  attempts  of  the  cunning  and  the  pow 
erful  to  control  the  machinery  of  government  for  their  own  advantage. 


CHAPTER  X. 

The  Issue  and  Control  of  the  Currency  a  Vital  Prerogative  of  Sovereignty. — Benton 
Fails  to  Secure  a  Direct  Issue  with  the  Non-Productive  Classes. — Abuses  of  the 
Control  of  the  Currency  by  State  Banks  Flagrant. — Bland  Renews  Benton's 
Interrupted  Work  Against  Corporation  Sovereignty  in  the  Issue  of  the  Cur 
rency. — The  Party  of  Commercial  Imperialism  in  the  United  States  and  the 
Policies  of  Warren  Hastings.— The  Threat  of  the  Fusillade  as  a  Factor  In 
Economic  Discussion. — "Bluffing"  as  a  Political  Method  in  America. — States 
manship  and  the  Poker  Habit. — The  Realities  of  Hate  and  Passion  Behind  the 
Theatrical  Threats  of  Professional  Politicians. — Stirring  the  South  to  Resist 
ance. — Bland  and  Alexander  H.  Stephens  Consult  on  Means  of  Preventing  an 
Outbreak. — Butler's  Attack  Answered  at  the  South  by  Deep  Disturbance. — Im 
morality  in  all  Parties  and  in  all  Sections. — The  Radicalism  of  Demagogues 
in  the  Black  Belt. — International  Commercialism  and  the  Trade  for  the  Con 
trol  of  the  American  Treasury. — Bland  on  Cox  and  Randall. 


HE  long  struggle  made  by  Benton  against  the  use  of  corpora 
tion  tokens  as  currency  had  been  only    partly    successful 
under  the  democratic  party  from  1830  to  1860.     The  demand 
for  a  coin  currency  had  been  urged  by  Benton  not  on  account 
of  any  attachment  to  coin  as  a  fetish,  but  as  a  means  of  restoring  to  the 
people  the  exercise  of  one  of  the  most  vital  prerogatives  of  their  sover 
eignty. 

Whoever  controls  the  currency  and  the  taxing  power  is  sovereign,  no 
matter  what  the  form  of  government  may  be.  It  was  for  the  life  of  re 
publican  institutions  that  Benton,  resisting  corporation  sovereignty  in  the 
control  of  money,  opened  the  fight  which  Bland  made  with  even  greater 
force  after  him. 

At  the  time  Benton' s  work  was  interrupted  by  civil  war,  the  passion 
of  which  broke  his  influence  and  retired  him  from  politics,  he  had  never 
succeeded  in  forcing  the  issues  logically.  As  a  result  of  compromise,  the 
power  of  issuing  credit  tokens  to  circulate  in  lieu  of  cash,  once  exercised 

by  the  Bank  of  the  United  States,  had  been  transferred  to  banks  chartered 

84 


AN  AMERICAN  COMMONER.  85 

by  the  states — which,  while  never  less  rapacious  than  the  bank  of  the 
United  States  had  been,  were  frequently  more  fraudulent  and  generally 
more  reckless.  They  had  only  the  one  advantage,  that  they  could  not  so 
readily  be  controlled  by  foreign  dealers  in  public  debt  and  by  currency 
brokers  such  as  those  who  during  the  Civil  war  took  advantage  of  the 
necessities  of  the  federal  government  to  impose  on  it  their  control  of  the 
currency  under  the  national  banking  system — a  system  so  devised  as  to 
give  holders  of  United  States  bonds  in  London,  Paris,  and  Berlin  power  to 
issue  American  currency  and  to  exercise  in  all  parts  of  the  country  a  pre 
rogative  which  all  publicists  agree  carries  sovereignty  with  it  to  those  who 
hold  it.  As  the  price  of  the  continued  existence  of  the  government,  Pres 
ident  Lincoln  and  the  Congress  supporting  his  administration,  were  forced 
to  delegate  the  better  half  of  the  national  sovereignty  to  a  class  of  men 
whom  the  President  himself  and  Salmon  P.  Chase,  his  secretary  of  the 
treasury,  had  been  trained  to  view  with  profound  distrust. 

No  sooner  had  the  war  ceased  than  the  real  republican  element  of  the 
party — the  men  who  actually  hated  government  by  force  or  by  extorted 
privilege,  began  to  strive  even  more  strenuously  for  a  reconstruction  of 
the  government  at  Washington  than  for  that  of  the  state  governments  at 
the  south. 

The  retirement  of  Sumner,  Seward,  and  Greeley,  followed  in  each  case 
by  death,  was  the  end  of  the  republican  party  which  had  forced  the  war  as 
a  protest  against  slavery. 

The  party  which  succeeded  it  and  showed  its  impulses  under  Grant 
was  a  party  of  commercial  imperialism  whose  ideal  government  was  that 
which,  when  established  by  Warren  Hastings  and  his  associates,  had  trans 
formed  England  from  a  limited  monarchy  to  an  empire,  controlled  by  the 
holders  of  the  debt  created  by  the  military  operations  necessary  for  its 
maintenance. 

When  Mr.  Bland  reached  Washington  in  December,  1873,  to  begin 
his  work  in  Congress,  these  commercial  imperialists,  under  cover  of  the 


86  AN  AMERICAN  COMMONER. 

expansionist  agitation  for  the  annexation  of  the  West  Indies,  reinforced  by 
such  measures  as  the  Civil  Rights  bill  and  the  "reconstruction"  measures 
at  home,  had  demonetized  silver  and  assured  to  themselves  the  control  of 
the  currency  and  the  taxing  power  for  a  generation. 

Being  without  a  "war  record"  and  having  a  knowledge  of  conditions 
at  both  the  south  and  west  such  as  was  hardly  possible  for  any  other  public 
man  of  his  time,  Mr.  Bland  became  naturally  the  advocate  of  southern  and 
western  producers  against  the  attempt  to  restrict  production  and  distribu 
tion  to  a  basis  adjusted  to  the  fancied  necessities  of  class  control  of  money 
and  supply. 

In  1896,  Mr.  Theodore  Roosevelt  declared  that  a  number  of  those 
who  were  advocating  Mr.  Eland's  theories  of  public  policy  might  be  ad 
vantageously  "stood  up  against  the  wall  and  shot."  This  view,  rather 
symptomatic  than  sectional,  governed  the  policies  which  prevailed  in  Wash 
ington  in  1873.  There  was  a  certain  amount  of  blood-thirstiness  in  it, 
but  much  more  of  what  is  sometimes  called  "bluffing" — the  Homeric  habit 
of  loud  talking  illustrated  in  those  primitive  heroes  who,  as  champions  of 
their  respective  sides,  stand  between  the  lines,  magnifying  each  his  own 
party  and  vilifying  or  threatening  the  other.  So  great  is  the  effect  of 
mere  atavism  in  politics,  that  perhaps  such  situations  as  that  of  1873  will 
never  be  fully  understood  until  the  present  arbitrary  divisions  between  the 
sciences,  necessary  as  they  are  for  classification,  are  abandoned.  When 
every  man  who  attempts  to  become  a  publicist  begins  by  studying  anthro 
pology  from  the  time  politics  and  political  economy  consisted  largely  of 
the  science  of  catching  and  preparing  men  for  actual  food,  it  may  be  much 
easier  to  understand  all  that  was  behind  General  Butler  when,  as  the  rep 
resentative  of  the  element  which  had  demonetized  silver,  he  urged  the 
Civil  Rights  bill  and  similar  measures  to  engage  public  attention  until  the 
passage  of  time  should  make  it  more  easily  possible  for  the  agents  of  the 
revolutionary  act  to  escape  responsibility  for  it.  It  was  a  time  of  the 
loudest  and  most  ferocious  talking  possible.  Much  of  it  was  due  to  actual 


AN  AMERICAN  COMMONER.  87 

hatred,  but  much  more  was  merely  representative  or  atavistic.  There  is 
no  room  to  doubt  the  sectional  animosities  of  the  people  at  this  time. 
Otherwise  every  question  of  political  economy  would  have  approached  its 
settlement  through  evolution.  But,  as  for  all  the  evil  passions  of  mankind, 
the  philosopher's  stone  has  been  found ;  as  hatred  and  malice,  blood-thirsti 
ness  and  the  spirit  of  violence  among  peoples  are  inevitably  transmuted  into 
fraud  and  oppression  in  the  governments  they  create,  it  happened  that 
back  of  all  the  false  pretense  of  the  period  at  Washington  there  was  a  re 
ality  of  actual  diabolism  which  was  only  to  be  overcome  gradually  by  the 
inherent  virtues  of  the  people.  The  average  politician  of  that  period,  re 
publican  or  democrat,  might  lose  all  real  feeling  against  the  political  antag 
onist  with  whom  in  private  he  drank  or  against  whom  he  "bluffed"  at 
poker — a  game  which,  under  the  Grant  administration,  was  as  much  a  part 
of  the  politics  of  Washington  as  were  the  open  proceedings  of  Congress 
itself.  It  was  at  poker  that  statesmen  practiced  themselves,  in  "passing" 
or  in  "bluffing,"  and  it  was  at  poker,  too,  that  they  learned  how  little  the 
strength  of  the  cards  held  in  actual  politics  has  to  do  with  the  result  of  the 
game.  A  favorite  method  of  bribery  was  to  allow  the  person  to  be  pur 
chased  to  win  the  purchase  money  by  "bluffing."  For  this  reason  and 
others,  the  game  became  a  mode  of  political  education  in  such  repute  that 
it  was  popularized  among  the  governing  classes  in  England  by  a  treatise 
written  by  one  of  President  Grant's  ministers  plenipotentiary.  He,  how 
ever,  was  not  responsible  for  the  introduction  of  American  "cocktails" 
which  occurred  at  about  the  same  period  of  "Anglo-Saxon  unification." 
Between  poker  and  cocktails,  in  private,  the  average  politician  of  the 
period,  "bluffing"  in  politics  as  over  his  cards,  was  the  more  ready  for  loud 
and  ferocious  talk  in  public.  Much  of  it  was  theatrical  and  in  a  rude  way 
artistic.  In  exceptional  cases,  such  as  that  of  General  Butler,  it  was  the 
height  of  art  with  little  or  no  passion  in  it.  But  back  of  it  were  fierce 
popular  hatreds,  stirred  to  flame  by  calculating  covetousness,  and  in  the 
south  there  was  a  terror  of  the  future  which  made  logical  action  difficult 


88  AN  AMERICAN  COMMONER. 

and  expressed  itself  from  time  to  time  in  desperate  acts  of  protest.  Such 
acts  of  unreason  were  anticipated  by  the  leaders  on  both  sides.  "I  think 
the  radicals  are  trying  to  get  up  as  much  offensive  legislation  as  possible 
so  as  to  drive  the  southern  people  to  resist  that  they  may  use  the  army  there 
in  the  next  presidential  election,"  wrote  Mr.  Bland  in  1875.*  "We  will 
do  all  we  can  to  prevent  it.  I  called  on  A.  H.  Stephens  of  Georgia  and 
had  a  long  talk  with  him  on  political  matters.  This  seems  to  be  his  idea 
also." 

In  politics  the  course  of  every  party  is  finally  determined  by  its 
extremists,  and  at  this  time  Louisiana,  South  Carolina,  and  the  "black 
belt"  of  Arkansas  presented  conditions  which  invited  the  attention  of  party 
managers,  and  speculative  financiers  interested  in  developing  the  extreme 
radicalism  of  southern  objection  to  the  results  of  "reconstruction."  While 
such  democrats  as  Mr.  Bland,  and  Alexander  H.  Stephens  were  planning 
to  prevent  outbreaks  in  these  states,  General  Butler  and  his  principals  were 
working  to  provoke  them,  and  they  were  too  often  met  more  than  half  way 
by  local  demagogues  in  the  "black  belt,"  cunning  enough  to  know  that  so 
long  as  politics  remained  sectional  they  could  compel  the  support  of  the 
democrats  in  such  states  as  Missouri,  Tennessee,  Georgia,  and  Virginia 
where  the  governing  motive  of  politics  was  a  desire  to  minimize  violence, 
and  restore  so  much  of  the  old  Union  as  was  possible,  or  could  be  made 
possible  under  the  new  conditions.  There  has  never  been  a  time  in  Ameri 
can  politics  when  the  atrocity  and  the  falsity  of  human  nature  were  all 
massed  on  one  side  or  confined  to  one  section. 

"Iliacos  intra  muros  peccatur  et  extra." 

Such  calculating  and  fictitious  radicalism  as  that  represented  at  this 
period  by  General  Butler  had  its  analogue  at  the  south  in  men  who,  when 
conditions  invited  it,  as  in  1896-98,  were  as  ready  to  change  party  as  he. 
Like  him,  they  had  their  own  peculiar  virtues,  and  their  own  individual 
claims  to  fitness  for  survival,  but  they  were  like  him  also  in  looking  on 


"Letter  to  Mrs.  Bland  from  Washington,  January  18,  1875. 


AN  AMERICAN  COMMONER.  09 

politics  as  a  science  involving  a  knowledge  of  what  is  worst  and  basest 
in  human  nature  and  necessitating  habitual  appeal  to  it.  If  it  is  fortu 
nately  true  that  such  habits  of  thought  and  action  are  characteristic  neither 
of  Massachusetts  nor  Louisiana,  it  is  true  that  in  every  state  in  the  Union 
the  social  demoralization  and  political  corruption  due  to  civil  war  greatly 
increased  the  number  and  the  influence  of  such  men — men  whom  the  stu 
dent  of  politics,  cultivating  calmness  of  thought  and  the  habit  of  reserva 
tion  in  statement  should  be  slow  to  describe  publicly  as  scoundrels,  no 
matter  how,  for  the  sake  of  strict  scientific  accuracy,  he  may  classify  them 
in  his  private  categories.  Among  such  men,  greatly  increased  everywhere 
by  civil  war,  the  commercial  imperialism  of  1866  to  i876  found  its  ready 
instruments  as  it  did  once  more  when,  from  1896  to  1900,  it  was  seeking 
means  of  undoing  Mr.  Eland's  work,  and  of  controlling  the  democratic 
party  organization  in  Missouri  and  elsewhere  against  him. 

The  stand  taken  by  Sumner  and  Seward  in  the  east,  by  Brown,  Schurz 
and  Blair  in  Missouri,  and  finally  by  Horace  Greeley  in  the  campaign  of 
1 872,  checked  imperialism  for  a  generation,  but  to  those  who  saw  only  the 
surface  phenomena  of  the  time,  the  defeat  of  Greeley  seemed  to  be  a  con 
clusive  indorsement  of  the  policies  he  opposed.  The  currency  was  accord 
ingly  put  on  an  "international"  basis,  and  the  policies  of  the  campaign  of 
i872  were  accentuated  for  i876.  General  Butler  was  kept  at  the  front 
with  his  Civil  Rights  bill,  and  a  still  more  radical  measure  for  military 
control  of  elections.  While  the  atmosphere  of  New  York  City,  and  of 
Washington  was  fetid  with  the  reek  of  political  scandal ;  while  in  politics, 
national,  state  and  municipal,  the  public  was  plundered  by  "rings"  of  every 
description,  while  the  public  domain,  and  the  public  treasury  were  being 
surrendered  to  an  unscrupulous  and  desperate  plutocracy,  wholly  foreign 
in  idea  to  America,  and  to  a  considerable  extent  foreign  in  actual  resi 
dence,  the  issues  of  civil  war  sectionalism  were  kept  alive  by  attacks  on 
the  pride  and  prejudices  of  a  people  conquered,  and  stripped  to  the  skin. 
The  thinking  American  of  southern  birth  who,  forced  to  choose  between 


90  AN  AMERICAN  COMMONER. 

the  principles  represented  on  one  side  by  Charles  Sumner  and  on  the  other 
by  Jefferson  Davis,  would  unhesitatingly  choose  those  of  Sumner,  may  be, 
from  Sumner's  own  standpoint,  the  more  fully  justified  in  the  utmost  de 
testation  for  policies  which  deliberately  wrung  the  human  heart  to  increase 
the  percentage  of  banking  profits,  and  which  the  better  to  control  the  tax 
ing  power,  cunningly  impelled  the  passionate  and  the  ignorant  to  violence 
and  bloodshed. 

The  contest  over  the  election  and  Civil  Rights  bill  grew  more  intense 
-as  the  presidential  year  approached.  "Mr.  Bland  told  me  that  six  mem 
bers  of  the  House  died  as  a  result  of  the  strain  of  the  fight  over  the  Civil 
Rights  bill,"  writes  Mrs.  Bland,  t  Mr.  Eland's  letters  at  this  period  were 
written  hurriedly  in  the  brief  intervals  of  the  struggle,  but  even  in  their 
most  hasty  and  disconnected  annotations  of  the  time,  they  have  a  lasting 
value  as  illustrations  of  the  intensity  of  the  contest. 

It  was  the  policy  of  the  New  York  bankers,  and  the  protected  interests 
of  Pennsylvania  to  contest  on  the  democratic  side  the  issues  which  they 
forced  on  the  republican.  In  pursuance  of  this  policy  they  supported  S.  S. 
Cox  and  Samuel  J.  Randall,  both  patriotic  men  of  many  admirable  quali 
ties,  representing  interests  which  at  times  were  more  conflicting  than  those 
of  the  north  and  south.  Mr.  Cox  represented  a  constituency  largely  con 
trolled  by  newspapers  and  banks,  capitalized  in  whole  or  part  in  London. 
This  capitalization  was  used  in  the  interests  of  the  gold  standard  but  in 
favor  of  a  lower  tariff  which  would  admit  English  goods.  The  Pennsyl 
vania  constituency  represented  by  Mr.  Randall  was  equally  in  favor  of  the 
gold  standard,  but  was  opposed  to  any  tariff  which  would  admit  English 
goods.  It  was  on  the  division  between  these  interests,  with  Mr.  Daniel 
Manning  to  represent  the  banks  and  the  London  "international  currency" 
interest  in  the  control  of  the  treasury,  that  the  democratic  party  was  al 
lowed  to  seat  President  Cleveland  in  1885. 

Both  Mr.  Randall  and  Mr.  Cox  were  strong  and  sincere  men,  largely 


fReminiscences  of  Mr.  Bland  written  for  this  book. 


AN  AMERICAN  COMMONER.  91 

representative  in  their  public  work  of  sectional  and  class  interests,  but  even 
in  their  representative  capacity,  accustomed  to  assert  their  own  individu 
ality,  Mr.  Cox  was  largely  instrumental  in  the  preliminary  work  of  demon 
etizing  silver,  and  Mr.  Randall  did  more  than  anyone  else,  perhaps,  to  make 
an  approximation  to  free  trade  impossible  for  the  nineteenth  century.  But 
though  they  were  thus  radically  opposed  to  Mr.  Bland,  he  showed  his 
usual  candor  of  intellect  and  kindness  of  heart  in  speaking  of  them.  In  a 
speech  of  April  19,  1880,  on  the  death  of  Mr.  Cox,  he  said : 

"When  I  first  came  to  Congress  in  1873,  I  found  Mr.  Cox  a  member 
of  the  House.  He  had  served  many  terms  prior  to  that.  I  had  never  met 
him  before.  His  reputation  at  that  time  as  an  orator  was  world-wide; 
consequently  I  was  anxious  to  meet  him  and  hear  him  speak.  My  ad 
miration  for  the  man  grew  upon  me  as  I  became  more  familiar  with  him. 
The  Forty-third  Congress  to  which  I  have  alluded  gave  many  occasions 
for  the  display  of  his  oratory,  wit  and  humor.  Mr.  Elaine  was  speaker. 
Gen.  Butler  of  Massachusetts  was  then  the  acknowledged  leader  on  the 
republican  side. 

"Gen.  Butler,  with  all  his  great  ability  and  pertinacity,  pressed  what 
were  then  known  as  the  Force  bill  and  the  Civil  Rights  bill.  He  succeeded 
in  passing  the  Civil  Rights  bill,  but  through  the  dilatory  tactics  of  the 
democratic  party,  led  by  Mr.  Randall  of  Pennsylvania  (whose  death,  but 
a  week  ago  we  were  called  to  mourn),  with  Mr.  Cox  as  our  great  cham 
pion  in  debate,  the  Force  bill  was  defeated.  Justice  requires  me  to  say  in 
passing  that  the  strict  impartiality  shown  by  Mr.  Elaine,  the  speaker,  dur 
ing  this  memorable  contest  excited  the  highest  warmth  of  admiration  from 
his  political  opponents.  In  that  fight  there  were  two  great  men  and  great 
characters  brought  more  prominently  than  before  into  public  notice.  These 
were  Samuel  J.  Randall  and  Samuel  Sullivan  Cox. 

"My  service  here  with  Mr.  Cox  began  in  the  Forty-third  Congress,  and 
was  continuous  except  in  the  Forty-ninth  Congress  while  he  was  minister 
to  Turkey.  I  was  fortunate  enough  to  have  a  seat  by  him  for  two  years. 
In  this  way  I  learned  to  know  him  as  a  friend.  From  overwork  and 
cares  incident  to  public  life  I  was  in  failing  health.  Mr.  Cox  took  great 
interest  in  my  case.  He  gave  me  the  benefit  of  his  advice  and  experience 
for  he  was  never  robust  himself.  His  amiable  disposition  threw  a  halo  of 
sunshine  around  his  companions.  As  my  health  was  gradually  restored, 
I  used  to  tell  him  it  was  all  due  to  his  cheerful  company  and  bouyant  tem 
perament. 


92  AN  AMERICAN  COMMONER. 

"Mr.  Cox  loved  the  Union  for  the  Union's  sake.  His  voice  and  his 
vote  were  potential  in  the  war  for  the  Union.  When  resistance  to  the 
Union  ceased,  his  'cause  of  war*  ceased.  He  had  no  resentments.  His 
voice  was  raised  for  peace  and  amnesty.  He  labored  to  restore  the  Union 
by  constitutional  methods. 

"The  unhappy  people  of  the  south  in  their  struggle  for  restored  liberty 
under  our  constitution  had  no  truer  or  abler  champion  than  he.  The  idea 
of  state  government  taught  by  Jefferson,  that  we  now  call  'home  rule/ 
was  a  cardinal  principle  with  him.  No  man  living  or  dead  did  more  in 
those  halls  than  he  to  cement  our  people  in  the  sublime  principles  of 
union  and  justice. 

"His  great  victories  were  achievements  of  intellect,  the  trophies  of 
valor  won  in  the  arena  of  debate.  His  walks  were  the  walks  of  peace ;  his 
ambition  was  tempered  by  justice  and  mercy.  His  boundless  sympathy 
took  in  loving  embrace  the  oppressed  everywhere.  His  smile  was  the 
delight  of  his  companions.  In  it  was  the  well-spring  of  a  perpetual  youth. 
He  approached  the  allotted  three  score  and  ten,  yet  had  he  lived  a  century 
he  would  have  died  young.  Neither  age  nor  physical  infirmity  could 
wrinkle  his  sunny  face,  quench  the  fire  of  his  eye,  or  blight  the  evergreen 
in  his  soul. 

"Our  ideas  associate  the  better  world  beyond  with  peace  and  joy,  mirth 
and  song.  If  this  be  true,  death  for  him  was  only  the  lifting  of  the  thin 
veil  separating  time  from  eternity.  As  he  left  this,  so  he  stepped  upon  the 
other  shore.  There  was  no  change." 

As  Mr.  Bland  could  say  this  so  readily  and  sincerely  of  men  from 
whose  opinions  on  vital  issues  of  political  economy  he  dissented  so  radi 
cally  as  he  did  from  Messrs.  Cox  and  Randall,  it  is  certain  that  he  would 
wish  to  have  equal  concessions  made  to  the  sincerity  and  patriotism  of 
many  of  the  republicans  whom,  with  Cox  and  Randall,  he  opposed  in  the 
bitter  sectional  struggle  of  the  times.  To  many  of  them,  as  individuals, 
no  less  praise  is  due  than  to  Mr.  Cox  and  Mr.  Randall,  but  back  of  the 
party  struggle  of  the  times  were  the  great  issues  of  progress  and  reaction 
of  popular  government  against  oligarchy.  These  are  not  sectional,  but  for 
the  time  being,  they  can  be  made  to  appear  so — as  they  were  in  1875  when 
the  masses,  north  and  south,  believed  they  were  supporting  the  funda 
mental  principles  of  popular  government,  in  what  appears  now  with  cer 
tainty  to  have  been  a  struggle  forced  by  plutocratic  influences.  This  was 


AN  AMERICAN  COMMONER.  93 

only  vaguely  suspected  in  1875,  however,  and  it  is  because  they  were  writ 
ten  from  the  standpoint  of  1875  rather  than  of  1900,  that  these  extracts 
from  Mr.  Eland's  letters  to  Mrs.  Bland,  given  in  the  next  chapter,  have 
their  greatest  historical  value. 


CHAPTER  XL 

Mr.  Bland  Describes  the  Struggle  of  the  Democratic  Minority  Against  the  Force 
Bill  and  the  Civil  Rights  Bill.— The  Roll  Call  on  a  Motion  to  Adjourn  as  the 
Last  Resort  of  Constitutional  Government. — The  Fight  of  1875  in  Congress  to 
Control  the  Presidential  Election  ot  1876. — The  Scott  Subsidy  and  the  Attempt 
to  Control  Distribution  through  an  Increase  of  Tariff  Taxation.— The  Senate 
allows  the  Force  Bill  to  Fail. 

HE  letters  which  follow  were  written  by  Mr.  Bland  to  Mrs. 
Bland,  generally  in  the  intervals  between  roll  calls  in  the 
House  during  the  "fillibustering"  which  gave  the  more  con 
servative  republicans  of  the  Senate  an  opportunity  to  evade 

the  direct  issue  of  systematizing  and  perpetuating  the  use  of  the  army  at 

the  polls: 

A  MINORITY  WITH  ITS  BACK  TO  THE  WALL. 

WASHINGTON,  January  27,  1875. 
(To  Mrs.  Bland.) 

"We  are  now  fillibustering  on  the  Civil  Rights  bill,  Butler  having  re 
ported  a  new  one;  we  are  moving  to  adjourn,  and  making  all  kinds  of  mo 
tions  so  as  to  stave  it  off.  I  expect  we  will  be  here  all  day  and  all  night.  We 
have  taken  three  votes  on  the  roll  call  to  adjourn,  and  now  have  another. 
The  excitement  is  getting  greater  all  the  time.  The  galleries  are  full  of 
fifteenth  amendmenters,  and  all  other  kinds  of  people.  I  sent  you  a 
Record  of  yesterday  showing  the  vote  on  the  amendment  to  the  Constitu 
tion.  It  was  defeated — two-thirds  not  voting  in  the  affirmative.  I  have  just 
stopped  and  voted  aye  to  adjourn.  This  is  the  fourth  vote.  'Old  Ben' 
looks  smiling,  and  I  suppose  will  call  for  his  dinner  again.*  It  looks  like 
fighting  now,  and  I  suppose  we  will  have  it  from  now  on  till  the  adjourn 
ment.  This  is  the  27th  of  January — only  one  more  month.  I  am  so  glad 
to  see  the  days  pass — these  'long  days/  " 

*During  the  progress  of  the  "fillibustering"  General  Butler  had  ordered  his  dinner  served  at  his  desk 
in  the  House. 

94 


AN  AMERICAN  COMMONER.  95 

ROLL  CALLS  AS  A  LAST  HOPE. 

WASHINGTON,  January  28,  1875. 
(To  Mrs.  Bland.) 

"Ever  since  I  wrote  yesterday  we  have  had  a  continuous  roll  call,  so 
that  for  twenty-four  hours  I  have  not  slept,  nor  been  absent,  but  have 
answered  every  roll  call.  The  atmosphere  in  the  House  would  kill  a  mule 
in  time,  and  if  we  are  not  all  made  sick  it  will  be  a  wonder.  We  have  no 
expectation  of  any  change  before  Saturday  night  at  12:00  o'clock,  and 
then  we  will  quit  for  Sunday.  This  will  be  four  days  and  nights  without 
rest.  I  do  not  know  how  we  will  manage  it,  but  will  have  to  get  some 
sleep  or  we  can  not  hold  out.  It  is  a  question  of  physical  endurance.  The 
radicals  have  three  to  one,  and  can  rest  each  other.  In  this  foul  atmos 
phere  about  one  hundred  Africans  slept  all  night  in  the  lobbies,  and  I 
suppose  thought  every  vote  would  bring  them  their  'civil  rights/  'Old 
Ben'  got  pretty  well  worn  out,  and  has  gone  to  take  a  rest  to  be  ready  to 
night,  I  suppose,  and — well  I  have  stopped  again  to  vote  for  the  fiftieth 
or  hundredth  time  to  adjourn,  since  yesterday.  The  roll  goes  on  and  on, 
and  will,  I  suppose,  until  Sunday.  I  hear  them  sighing  all  around  me, 
and  they  are  a  sleepy  looking  set.  I  have  just  passed  between  two  tellers 
for  calling  the  ayes  and  noes  for  adjournment.  The  roll  goes  on  again, 
so  we  have  three  motions  now  pending — one  to  adjourn  now.  one  to  ad 
journ  over  till  Friday,  and  one  until  Saturday,  and  have  to  call  the  roll 
on  all  of  them,  which  will  take  over  an  hour.  When  we  get  all  these  calls, 
then  we  go  through  the  entire  process  again  and  again,  and  we  will  do  so 
until  a  physical  breakdown  overcomes  one  side  or  the  other.  Give  my 
love  to  little  Virgie,  and  kiss  her  for  papa.  My  whole  heart  to  her  and 
mamma.  I  am  too  tired  to  write  more." 

ONE  HOUR'S  SLEEP  IN  FORTY-SIX. 

WASHINGTON,  January  30,  1875. 
(To  Mrs.  Bland.) 

"This  is  Saturday,  the  3Oth,  and  I  am  glad  the  month  is  about  out. 
I  wrote  two  notes,  not  letters,  yesterday.  I  wrote  the  first  and  mailed  it 
about  10:00  o'clock  in  the  morning;  half  an  hour  afterward  we  adjourned 
and  I  wrote  another,  or  tried  to,  but  was  so  sleepy  and  tired  and  nervous 
that  I  could  not  write,  and  went  home,  and  slept  about  three  hours  before 
night,  then  got  up  and  walked  around  awhile,  and  went  to  bed  about  half- 
past  nine,  and  got  up  about  nine  this  morning,  so  I  feel  refreshed,  and  am 
well  and  all  right.  I  don't  think  I  am  hurt  much,  though  I  am  sore  about 


96  AN  AMERICAN  COMMONER. 

the  muscles.  We  had  a  session  of  forty-six  hours,  and  I  slept  only  about 
one  hour  during  that  time.  I  was  on  hand  at  about  every  roll  call.  It  will 
take  all  day  to  read  the  Record.  We  wore  the  radicals  out." 

READY  FOR  MORE  FILIBUSTERING. 

WASHINGTON,  January  31,  1875. 
(To  Mrs.  Bland.) 

"The  House  adjourned  Saturday,  and  I  have  had  plenty  of  sleep  and 
rest,  and  am  ready  for  more  fillibustering,  if  necessary.  The  radicals  say 
they  will  amend  the  rules  as  to  present  the  Civil  Rights  bill  next  week. 
If  they  do,  then  they  will  pass  the  bill.  Well,  we  will  have  to  let  them  take 
the  responsibility,  and  I  expect  they  will  pass  it  in  some  shape,  but  not  in 
the  terms  of  the  Senate  bill.  We  whipped  them,  made  them  adjourn  at 
any  rate,  and  that  was  quite  a  victory,  though  it  cost  us  the  loss  of  two 
nights'  sleep,  and  we  were  almost  whipped  ourselves  when  the  adjourn 
ment  came.  I  never  felt  so  glad  to  hear  the  House  adjourn  before." 

THE  RULES  AMENDED. 

WASHINGTON,  February  2.  1875. 
(To  Mrs.  Bland.) 

''The  radicals  have  succeeded  to-day  in  so  amending  the  rules  as  to 
prevent  fillibustering,  and  now  they  can  pass  anything  they  please.  I 
suppose  that  in  a  day  or  so  they  will  pass  the  Civil  Rights  bill,  and  end  that 
controversy.  Let  them  pass  it,  for  it  will  hurt  them  more  than  anyone 
else,  in  my  opinion.  The  galleries  are  crowded  full,  and  back  of  me  there 
are  about  five  hundred  negroes.  It  is  suffocating." 

THE  FORCE  BILL. 

WASHINGTON,  February  8,  1875. 
(To  Mrs.  Bland.) 

"This  is  Monday,  and  what  may  come  up  before  we  get  through,  I 
can  not  tell,  but  I  expect  some  mischief.  Now  you  have  got  the  papers 
showing  all  about  the  excitement  over  the  Civil  Rights  bill.  I  have  written 
you  most  of  the  matters  of  interest  connected  with  it.  We  are  threatened 
now  with  legislation  to  put  the  south  under  Grant's  military  rule.  It  is 
hard  to  tell  where  the  radicals  will  stop,  for  the  last  elections  have  so  en 
raged  and  alarmed  them  that  they  seem  entirely  desperate.  The  lobby  is 
full,  and  all  kinds  of  schemes  are  on  foot  to  get  money  from  the  treasury. 


STATUE  OF  ANDREW^TACKSON. 


PEACE  MONUMENT. 


STATUE  OF  LAFAYETTE. 


ARLINGTON,  FORMER  HOME  OF  GEN.  R.  E.  LEE. 

SCENES  IN  AND  NEAR  WASHINGTON. 


AN  AMERICAN  COMMONER.  97 

I  have  no  doubt  that  we  will  have  an  exciting  time  from  now  on,  and  the 
people  are  watching  very  closely  what  takes  place  here." 

VINDICTIVE  AND  DIABOLICAL  MEASURES. 

WASHINGTON,  February  12,  1875. 
(To  Mrs.  Bland.) 

"The  republican  caucus  has  agreed  on  the  most  vindictive  and  dia 
bolical  measures  possible  for  the  overthrow  of  the  southern  states,  and  to 
carry  the  next  presidential  election.  Nothing  but  a  united  and  full  demo 
cratic  delegation  can  possibly  prevent  their  success.  We  are  on  the  tariff 
bill  to-day,  and  it  causes  great  excitement,  for  it  proposes  largely  increased 
taxation  for  the  purpose,  no  doubt,  of  getting  money  to  maintain  a  large 
standing  army  in  the  south.  The  truth  is,  the  country  is  in  imminent 
danger  from  the  revolutionary  intentions  and  acts  of  Grant  and  his  party." 

A  STORMY  TIME  EXPECTED. 

WASHINGTON,  February  14,  1875. 
(To  Mrs.  Bland.) 

"We  were  on  private  bills  yesterday  most  of  the  time,  and  nothing  of 
note  transpired.  After  Saturday  the  ten  days  for  suspension  of  the  rules 
will  begin,  and  from  that  time  on  I  expect  we  will  have  night  sessions  and 
a  stormy  time  generally.  I  am  so  glad  February  is  half  out.  It  begins 
to  look  short  now.  I  have  a  desperately  mean  pen,  but  don't  know  if  I 
am  not  writing  better  with  it  than  I  would  with  a  good  one.  Beck  is 
said  to  be  getting  on  very  well  with  his  broken  arm,  and  will  soon  be  out 
again.  Wood  (Fernando)  looks  as  dignified  and  fine  as  ever.  Holman 
still  fights  appropriations,  and  is  called  the  'Watch  dog  of  the  Treasury/ 
The  Missouri  delegation  are  very  quiet  this  session,  making  no  speeches. 
I  may  make  one  yet,  though  it  is  doubtful,  for  I  think  it  about  as  well  to 
wait  till  next  winter." 

A  VOTE  AGAINST  SUBSIDY. 

WASHINGTON,   February  22,    1875. 
(To  Mrs.  Bland.) 

"We  had  a  vote  to  suspend  the  rules  in  favor  of  Tom  Scott's  Texas 
Pacific  Railroad  to-day.  I  voted  against  the  radicals,  and  have  incurred 
the  displeasure  of  the  St.  Louis  Republican.  I  expect  all  the  St.  Louis 

7 


9$  AN  AMERICAN  COMMONER. 

papers  will  take  me  to  task  for  my  vote,  but  I  can  not  help  it  for  I  am  op 
posed  to  all  subsidies.  It  would  help  St.  Louis,  but  I  do  not  think  it  right 
to  tax  the  people  for  the  benefit  of  private  corporations.  I  am  certain  I 
voted  right,  and  that  ends  it.  We  will  have  night  sessions  most  of  the 
time  from  now  on,  but  I  don't  care  for  that,  for  it  helps  to  pass  the  time." 

CONTROLLING  THE  PRODUCER  THROUGH  HIS  PRODUCT. 

WASHINGTON,  February  24,  1875. 
(To  Mrs.  Bland.) 

"The  tariff  bill  passed  last  night.  It  may  not  pass  the  Senate,  but  I 
expect  it  will.  I  have  great  hopes  that  we  will  get  through  without  any 
more  oppressive  legislation  for  the  south,  yet  the  Grant  radicals  are  deter 
mined  to  force  it  if  possible." 

A  SLEEPLESS  STRUGGLE. 

WASHINGTON,  February  25,  1875. 
(To  Mrs.  Bland.) 

"I  hope  you  will  pardon  me  if  I  do  not  write  a  long  letter  this  time. 
I  have  been  in  the  House  since  yesterday  at  10  o'clock.  We  are  all  on  the 
'southern  force  bill/  and  have  beat  the  radicals  so  far  by  fillibustering.  We 
have  gained  one  day  on  them  and  are  still  at  the  fight.  I  have  not  slept  at 
all,  and  am  quite  uneasy  and  nervous.  A  certain  number  of  democrats 
have  to  stay  here  without  sleep  or  rest  to  make  the  fight,  as  some  of  the 
others  shirk  and  go  off.  Those  of  us  who  stay  will  endure  as  long  as 
physical  endurance  will  last,  and  fight  it  out.  The  picture  I  sent  you  of 
the  Mead  lock'  on  the  Civil  Rights  bill  is  a  pretty  good  representation  of  the 
House  then,  as  well  as  now,  and  will  answer  both  cases  quite  as  well. 
You  need  not  be  uneasy  about  me,  for  I  think  I  can  stand  it  as  long  as  any 
radical,  and  it  will  not  make  me  sick.  I  will  take  the  best  care  of  myself 
I  can." 

STILL  THE  FORCE  BILL. 

WASHINGTON,  February  26,  1875. 
(To  Mrs.  Bland.) 

"We  had  a  hard  time  over  the  southern  force  bill,  as  I  wrote  you  yes 
terday,  and  it  is  not  over  yet.  We  adjourned  last  evening  about  5  o'clock, 
and  I  went  to  bed  at  six  in  the  evening,  and  got  up  at  seven  this  morning; 
so  I  had  a  good  rest.  We  will  begin  the  fight  to-day  again,  and  continue 


AN  AMERICAN  COMMONER.  99 

it  as  long  as  a  dilatory  motion  can  be  made.  We  may  be  in  session  all 
night  again ;  in  fact  we  will  have  but  little  rest  from  now  on,  day  or  night, 
till  adjournment.  One  great  trouble  of  these  night  sessions  is  the  injury 
to  the  eye.  The  light  is  so  brilliant  at  night  that  with  the  loss  of  sleep 
it  almost  invariably  hurts  the  eyes.  My  eyes  were  in  a  bad  condition  last 
night,  and  they  are  a  good  deal  inflamed  this  morning,  so  much  that  it 
hurts  them  to  read  and  write." 

AN  INCREASE  OF  GRAY  HAIRS. 

WASHINGTON,  February  27,  1875. 
(To  Mrs.  Bland.) 

"This  is  Saturday,  and  I  am  glad  the  time  draws  near  for  adjourn 
ment.  WTe  are  still  on  the  southern  force  bill,  and  may  be  all  night  again. 
We  did  not  have  to  stay  up  last  night,  of  which  I  am  glad,  for  it  tells  se 
verely  on  our  health  and  comfort,  and  you  will  find  that  I  have  got  many 
more  gray  hairs  than  when  I  left.  At  least  I  think  so,  and  feel  so.  We 
have  had  a  desperately  hard  time  of  it,  and  the  weather  has  been  so  bad 
that  it  has  been  very  trying  on  us.  There  is  hardly  a  member  who  is  not 
suffering  from  complaints  brought  on  by  so  much  loss  of  sleep  and  confine 
ment.  The  galleries  are  much  crowded  to-day.  We  will  have  a  warm 
time  of  it  on  this  bill.  If  we  can  keep  it  from  being  reported  to  the  Senate 
till  Monday,  it  will  be  defeated,  but  I  fear  we  will  not  be  able  to  do  it." 

THE  SENATE  FAILS  GRANT. 

WASHINGTON,  February  28,  1875. 
(To  Mrs.  Bland.) 

"We  fillibustered  all  day  yesterday,  and  up  to  12  o'clock  last  night, 
when  the  southern  force  bill  passed.  One  object,  however,  was  accom 
plished,  for  we  desired  to  keep  it  from  passing  so  as  to  be  reported  to  the 
Senate  before  Monday,  and  we  did  so,  for  the  Senate  got  tired  waiting, 
and  adjourned.  That  will  defeat  it  in  the  Senate  for  they  can  not  get  it 
up  in  time  to  pass  it.  So  we  have  killed  the  main  bill  for  the  re 
election  of  Grant  or  some  other  radical.  The  Civil  Rights  bill  has  passed 
the  Senate,  and  will  be  a  law,  but  it  is  of  very  little  consequence  compared 
with  the  one  we  have  killed  by  timely  fillibustering." 

MR.  BLAND  THREATENED  WITH  CENSURE. 
(From  an  undated  letter  of  1875,  to  Mrs.  Bland) 

"I  send  Record.  On  page  21  you  will  find  where  they  sought  to  cen 
sure  me  for  not  voting  so  as  to  make  a  quorum.  No  business  could  be 


100  AN  AMERICAN   COMMONER. 

done  unless  a  quorum  voted.  The  democrats  refused  to  vote  so  as  to  pre 
vent  any  business  pertaining  to  the  southern  force  bill  from  being  done. 
Clements  wanted  to  make  me  vote,  and  Butler  wanted  to  make  Randall 
of  Pensylvania  vote,  but  they  could  not  succeed,  for  that  required  a  quo 
rum  also.  I  would  have  been  expelled  before  I  would  have  voted,  and  by 
that  made  a  quorum  to  pass  the  bill." 

WASHINGTON,  March  2,  1875. 
(To  Mrs.  Bland.) 

"We  had  a  session  nearly  all  last  night,  and  I  suppose  we  will  have 
but  little  sleep  until  we  adjourn,  you  must  excuse  this  short  letter.  I  am 
worked  down,  and  very  tired.  I  hardly  know  whaf  I  write." 


CHAPTER  XII. 

Mr.  Bland  Reviews  his  Own  Connection  with  the  Struggle  for  American  Popular 
Control  of  American  Mints  and  the  American  Treasury. — Currency  Legislation 
from  the  Demonetization  Act  of  1873  to  the  Bankers'  Panic  and  the  Renewed 
Struggle  for  Demonetization  in  the  Last  Decade  of  the  Century. — How  "the 
Crime  of  1873"  was  Perpetrated. — Mr.  Bland  Appointed  to  the  Committee  on 
Mines  and  Mining. — The  Banks  Bill  and  the  First  Sixteen-to-One  Free  Coinage 
Bill. — The  Silver  Commission  of  the  Forty-Fourth  Congress. — The  Bland  Free 
Coinage  Bill  and  the  Allison  Amendment. — The  Hayes  Veto  and  the  Votes  of 
Messrs.  McKinley,  Carlisle  and  Others  to  pass  the  Bill  over  it. — The  Demand  of 
the  Bondholders  for  the  Privilege  of  Issuing  and  Controlling  the  Currency. — 
The  London  Bankers  and  their  New  York  and  Western  Agents  Raid  the  Treas 
ury,  Contract  Credits  and  Compel  Panic  as  a  means  of  Securing  a  Currency  of 
Corporation  Notes  for  the  Public  and  the  Payment  of  their  own  Bonds  in  Gold. 
— England  Demonetizes  Silver  in  India  to  aid  Them. — At  the  Parting  of  the 
Ways  with  Wall  Street.— Mr.  Bland  Forces  the  Issues  Which  Compelled  the 
Chicago  Platform  and  the  Campaign  of  1896. — He  Points  out  the  only  Possible 
Course  for  the  Democratic  Party  in  the  Future. 

BY  R.  P.  BLAND. 

(In  1895,  Mr.  Bland  delivered  a  series  of  lectures  in  the  south  and  west,  reviewing  currency  legis 
lation  from  the  demonetization  of  silver  in  1873  to  the  repeal  of  the  silver  purchasing  clause  of  the  Sher 
man  act  under  the  second  Cleveland  administration.  In  preparing  himself  for  these  lectures,  he  wrote  a 
paper  which  was  found  by  Mrs.  Bland  among  his  other  papers  after  his  death.  It  gives  from  his 
own  standpoint  and  as  a  result  of  his  own  experience  and  observation,  a  resume  of  the  history  of  twenty 
years  of  currency  control.  As  the  control  of  the  currency  and  the  taxing  power  was  the  real  issue  of  the 
sectional  demonstration  of  1875,  which  followed  the  demonetization  of  silver  in  1873,  Mr.  Eland's  own 
reviews  of  two  decades  of  currency  legislation  is  given  here  as  vital  for  an  understanding  of  the 
reality  back  of  the  false  pretenses  of  politics.  What  follows  in  this  entire  chapter  is  from  his  manu 
script.) 


O  COMPREHEND  the  silver  question,  and  the  battles  fought 
in  Congress  for  the  free  coinage  of  silver  for  twenty  years,  it 
is  necessary  to  begin  with  the  act  of  1873 — tne  act  which 
demonetized  the  standard  silver  dollar.  From  the  passage 
of  our  first  mint  act  in  1792  until  the  demonetization  act  of  1873,  the 
standard  silver  dollar,  371  1-4  grains  of  pure  silver,  was  the  unit  of  account 
or  standard  of  value.  The  amount  of  pure  silver  in  this  dollar  was  never 
altered,  whereas  the  gold  dollar  had  been  twice  changed.  For  over  eighty 
years  and  up  to  1873  the  standard  silver  dollar,  as  now  coined  in  pure  silver 

was  the  unit  of  our  coinage.     The  act  of  1873  was  entitled  "An  act  revis- 

101 


102  AN  AMERICAN   COMMONER. 

ing  and  amending  the  laws  relating  to  the  mints  and  the  assay  offices  and 
the  coinage  of  the  United  States."  This  act  contains  in  all  sixty-seven 
sections  and  deals  with  the  management  of  the  mints  and  assay  offices.  The 
title  of  the  act  and  the  context  indicate  its  sole  purpose  to  be  to  amend 
details  relating  to  the  management  of  mints,  assay  offices  and  the  coinage. 
There  is  nothing  whatever  in  the  title  of  the  act  giving  notice  that  its  pur 
pose  was  to  displace  the  old  silver  unit  and  to  put  in  its  stead  the  gold 
dollar  as  the  unit  of  value;  nothing  to  indicate  a  purpose  to  prohibit  the 
coinage  of  the  old  silver  unit  that  had  had  the  right  of  free  coinage  at  our 
mints  and  full  legal  tender  from  the  foundation  of  the  government  up  to 
that  time.  Notwithstanding  the  act  contains  sixty-seven  sections  in  all, 
there  was  no  important  change  in  the  law  relating  to  the  mints  and  assay 
offices  and  the  coinage,  excepting  that  part  prohibiting  the  coinage  of  the 
standard  silver  dollar  and  substituting  the  gold  dollar  for  the  silver  dollar 
as  the  unit  of  account.  In  further  proof  of  the  surreptitious  nature  of 
this  revolutionary  change  from  the  silver  unit  to  the  gold  unit — from  the 
law  providing  for  the  free  coinage  of  both  gold  and  silver  to  the  law  that 
prohibited  the  coinage  of  any  full  legal  tender  money  except  gold — it  is 
only  necessary  to  refer  to  the  manner  in  which  this  important  change  in 
our  "monetary  system  was  brought  about.  The  change  could  have  been 
made  in  a  few  words  and  in  one  section  had  the  authors  of  the  bill  gone  to 
work  openly  to  accomplish  their  purpose ;  but  instead  of  that,  the  work  of 
demonetization  was  done  by  piecemeal,  by  indirection  and  evidently  in  a 
stealthy  manner.  The  sections  that  aid  this  are  sections  14,  15,  i7,  20  and 
21.  Section  14  provides  that  the  gold  coin  of  the  United  States  shall  be  a 
one  dollar  piece,  which  at  the  standard  weight  of  25  8-10  grains  shall  be 
the  unit  of  value.  There  is  nothing  in  the  title  of  the  act  to  indicate  such 
a  purpose  as  this  and  before  this  section  occurs,  and  this  change  is  made, 
there  are  thirteen  other  sections  preceding  it,  dealing  only  with  the  man 
agement  of  the  mint.  Section  15  provides  that  silver  coins  of  the 
United  States  shall  be  a  trade  dollar ;  a  half  dollar,  or  fifty  cent  piece ;  a 


AN  AMERICAN  COMMONER.  103 

quarter  dollar,  or  twenty-five  cent  piece;  a  dime,  or  ten  cent  piece;  and 
that  the  weight  of  the  trade  dollar  shall  be  420  grains  troy.  It  further 
provides  that  these  coins  shall  be  a  legal  tender  at  their  nominal  value  for 
any  amount  not  exceeding  five  dollars  in  any  one  payment,  putting  the  trade 
dollar  and  the  fractional  coins  on  the  same  level  as  to  legal  tender,  limiting 
them  all  to  five  dollars  only.  It  will  be  noted  that  the  silver  dollar,  371  1-4 
grains  pure  silver,  or  412  1-2  grains  standard  silver,  which  had  been  coined 
freely  up  to  that  time  was  dropped  from  the  list  of  silver  coins ;  yet,  the 
work  was  not  quite  done  and  before  the  accomplishment  of  their  purpose, 
it  was  necessary  to  conceal  the  object  by  putting  in  the  intervening  section 
(section  16)  relating  to  minor  coins,  or  nickels  and  coppers.  Then  comes 
section  i7,  which  completes  the  work  begun  in  section  15.  Section  i7 
provides  that  no  coins  either  of  gold,  silver  or  minor  coinage,  shall  here 
after  be  issued  from  the  mint  other  than  those  of  the  denominations,  stand 
ards  and  weights  herein  set  forth.  Section  15  had  set  forth  the  silver 
coins  authorized  to  be  struck  at  our  mints,  purposely  leaving  out  the  silver 
dollar;  so  that  section  i7  clinches  the  work  by  inhibiting  the  coinage  of 
any  silver  pieces  except  the  coins  named  in  section  15.  Section  14,  above 
quoted,  had  already  provided  for  the  coinage  of  the  gold  dollar  piece  as  the 
unit  of  value;  a  quarter  eagle,  or  $2.50  piece;  a  $5  piece,  or  half  eagle;  an 
eagle,  or  a  $10  piece;  and  a  double  eagle,  or  a  $20  piece.  Section  20  pro 
vides  that  any  owner  of  gold  bullion  may  deposit  the  same  at  any  mint 
to  be  formed  into  coin  or  bars  for  his  benefit,  giving  free  and  unlimited 
coinage  to  gold.  Section  21  provides  that  the  owner  of  silver  bullion  may 
deposit  the  same  at  any  mint  to  be  formed  into  bars  or  into  dollars  of  420 
grains  troy,  designated  in  this  act  as  trade  dollars,  and  no  deposit  of  silver 
for  other  coinage  shall  be  received ;  thus  absolutely  inhibiting  all  coinage  of 
full  legal  tender  standard  silver  money.  The  trade  dollar  was  not  made  a 
legal  tender  except  in  sums  of  $5,  being  put  on  the  same  plane  with  frac 
tional  or  subsidiary  coin,  while  gold  was  made  the  unit  of  value  and  given 
unlimited  coinage  at  our  mints.  While  it  is  evident  from  the  manner  in 


104  AN  AMERICAN  COMMONER. 

which  this  revolution  in  our  monetary  system  was  accomplished,  that  it 
was  done  in  an  indirect  and  stealthy  manner,  yet  it  was  the  most  important 
and  far-reaching  legislation  on  money  ever  enacted  by  our  government. 
Even  the  trade  dollar  was  finally  struck  from  the  list  of  coins.  By  the  act 
of  July  22,  1 876,  the  coinage  of  the  trade  dollar  was  suspended,  except 
that  it  could  be  coined  in  the  discretion  of  the  Secretary  of  the  Treasury, 
while  its  legal  tender  character  was  repealed.  The  act  of  February  9, 
i887,  authorized  the  retirement  and  recoinage  of  the  trade  dollar  by  ex 
changing  standard  silver  dollars  for  all  trade  dollars  at  that  time  outstand 
ing,  prohibited  its  further  coinage  and  ordered  its  recoinage  into  standard 
silver  dollars.  The  act  of  February  12,  1873,  was  passed  in  the  closing 
days  of  the  last  session  of  the  Forty-second  Congress.  I  was  first  elected 
to  Congress  in  November,  i872 ;  the  term  of  service  began  on  the  fourth  of 
March,  1873,  not  quite  one  month  after  silver  was  demonetized.  The 
Fortv-third  Congress  assembled  in  regular  session  in  December,  1873, 
about  ten  months  after  the  passage  of  the  act  demonetizing  silver.  James 
G.  Elaine,  of  Maine,  was  chosen  speaker  of  the  House.  During  the  whole 
Forty-third  Congress  the  silver  question  was  not  alluded  to.  Both  Con 
gress  and  the  country  were  entirely  ignorant  of  the  effect  of  the  act  of 
February  12,  1873.  Mr.  Blaine  himself,  who,  at  the  time  of  the  passage 
of  the  act  of  1873  was  speaker  of  the  House,  a  few  years  afterwards  stated 
in  the  Senate  that  he  was  not  aware  of  the  effect  of  the  act  demonetizing 
silver.  The  Forty-third  Congress,  however,  very  elaborately  considered 
the  currency  question.  At  that  time  neither  gold  or  silver  were  in  circula 
tion  ;  but  little  attention  was  paid  to  coin  money  by  Congress  or  the  masses 
of  the  people.  Only  an  interested  few,  money  dealers  and  bondholders, 
seem  to  have  been  let  into  the  secret  of  the  change  in  our  system  of  coinage 
effected  in  1873.  We  were  on  a  paper  basis ;  consequently  the  discussions  of 
the  currency  question  related  entirely  to  the  greenback  circulation.  The 
Forty-third  Congress  passed  what  was  commonly  called  at  that  time  the 
Inflation  Act.  This  act  increased  the  greenback  circulation  to  four  hundred 


AN  AMERICAN  COMMONER.  105 

millions  of  dollars,  but  was  vetoed  by  President  Grant.  This  so-called 
"Inflation  Act"  was  passed  during  the  first  session  of  the  Forty-third 
Congress  and  was  intended  to  meet  the  difficulties  of  the  country  at  that 
time — an  attempted  retirement  of  the  greenbacks  having  produced  alarm 
in  the  country  and  brought  on  a  disastrous  panic.  At  the  last,  or  short 
session,  of  the  Forty-third  Congress,  the  resumption  law,  so  called,  was 
passed,  providing  for  the  resumption  of  specie  payments  to  take  place  on 
the  first  day  of  January,  1879.  This  law  gave  power  to  the  secretary  of 
the  treasury  to  sell  the  character  and  description  of  bonds  authorized  by  the 
act  of  July  14,  i87o,  known  as  the  Refunding  Act.  These  bonds  were  paya 
ble  in  coin  of  the  standard  value  of  that  date,  July  14,  i87o.  The  standard 
coins  of  July  14,  i87o,  were  the  silver  dollar  as  the  unit  of  account,  having 
full  legal  tender  power  and  free  coinage;  and  also  the  gold  dollar  and  its 
multiples  as  now  coined.  These  bonds  were  based  upon  the  bimetallic 
system  of  free  coinage  of  gold  and  silver  at  the  ratio  then  prevailing  of 
15.98  to  i  (commonly  called  16  to  i),  and  the  ratio  at  which  we  have 
subsequently  coined  over  four  hundred  millions  of  silver  standard  dollars. 
It  is  under  the  authority  of  the  resumption  law  that  the  power  is  still 
claimed  to  exist  to  sell  bonds  for  resumption  purposes  and  under  this 
alleged  authority  our  late  bond  sales  took  place.  It  will  be  seen,  that  in 
the  Forty-third  Congress,  the  law  was  passed,  the  purpose  of  which  was 
ultimately  to  retire  the  greenbacks  and  go  to  a  coin  basis.  Congress, 
prior  to  that  had  prohibited  the  coinage  of  anything  but  gold  as  a  full  legal 
tender  money,  so  that  the  act  of  1873,  passed  in  the  Forty-second  Con 
gress,  demonetized  silver  and  the  act  passed  in  the  subsequent  Forty-third 
Congress,  providing  for  the  resumption  of  specie  payments,  was  evidently 
intended  to  compel  a  resumption  of  specie  payments  on  the  single  gold 
standard  of  payments.*  Thus  the  Forty- third  Congress  adjourned,  leav 
ing  on  the  statute  books  the  law  of  the  Forty-second  Congress  demonetizing 
silver,  and  the  law  of  the  Forty-third  Congress  requiring  the  resumption  of 


*This  is  a  point  of  fundamental  importance. 


106  AN  AMERICAN   COMMONER. 

specie  payments  in  1879.  These  two  acts,  had  no  intervening  legislation 
occurred,  would  have  necessarily  forced  the  country  to  resumption  on  the 
single  gold  basis.  I  was  elected  to  the  Forty-fourth  Congress.  The 
House  of  the  Forty-fourth  Congress  being  Democratic,  elected  Mr.  M.  C. 
Kerr,  of  Indiana,  speaker.  I  was  appointed  chairman  of  the  committee 
on  mines  and  mining.  This  committee  did  not  have  charge  of  the  coinage 
question  proper;  but  General  Banks,  of  Massachusetts,  a  member  of  the 
House,  introduced  a  bill  and  referred  it  to  our  committee.  The  object  and 
title  of  his  bill  was  to  "utilize  the  product  of  the  gold  and  silver  mines  of 
the  United  States."  The  bill  provided  for  the  deposit  of  gold  and  silver 
bullion  with  various  assay  offices  and  authorized  the  issuing  of  certificates 
of  deposit  thereon — these  certificates  showing  the  weight  and  the  fineness 
of  the  bullion  deposited.  The  holders  of  the  certificates  to  be  paid  in  bul 
lion  of  the  weight  and  fineness  and  of  the  kind  and  amount  deposited, 
on  presentation  of  the  certificate.  These  certificates  were  not  made 
money  or  a  legal  tender  for  any  purpose.  No  provision  was  made 
in  the  bill  for  the  coinage  of  the  bullion.  In  fact  the  government 
was  made  a  mere  depository  for  the  bullion  and  was  not  to  become 
the  owner.  The  idea  of  the  author  seems  to  have  been  that  the  certifi 
cates  would  have  gone  into  use  in  mercantile  transactions  without 
having  any  legal  tender  power.  The  committee  on  mines  and  mining  was 
composed  of  the  following  members:  Richard  P.  Bland,  of  Missouri, 
chairman ;  Jacob  Turney,  of  Pensylvania ;  Milton  J.  Durham,  of  Kentucky ; 
Allen  Potter,  of  Michigan ;  N.  Holmes  O'Dell,  of  New  York ;  Randall  N. 
Gibson,  of  Louisiana;  Alexander  Campbell,  of  Illinois;  James  L.  Evans, 
of  Indiana;  William  Woodburn,  of  Nevada;  Lucian  B.  Cosswell,  of 
Wisconsin ;  and  John  R.  Lynch,  of  Mississippi.  About  the  time  that  this 
bill  was  referred  to  our  committee,  the  silver  question  was  being  discussed 
in  Congress  and  especially  in  the  Senate.  I  am  not  informed  as  to  how  the 
secret  of  the  act  of  1873  was  found  out,  or  who  first  discovered  the  mischief 
wrought  by  it.  I  can  say,  however,  that  the  first  information  I  had  of  the 


AN  AMERICAN  COMMONER.  107 

demonetization  of  silver  came  from  Senator  Bogy,  of  Missouri.  Whether 
he  was  the  first  in  Congress  to  unearth  this  infamy,  I  do  not  know;  I  can 
only  say  that  possibly  others  may  have  discovered  it  before  him.  The 
first  great  speech,  upon  the  subject  in  either  House  was  made  by  Senator 
Jones,  of  Nevada,  in  the  Senate  during  the  first  session  of  the  Forty- fourth 
Congress.  It  was  one  of  the  ablest  speeches  made  at  that  or  any  other 
time  upon  this  subject  and  it  attracted  world-wide  attention.  In  the  mean 
time  the  committee  on  mines  and  mining  took  up  the  Banks  Bullion  bill, 
and  after  several  weeks'  consideration  reported  it  back  to  the  House  with 
a  free  coinage  provision.  The  bill  as  thus  amended  was  reported  back 
to  the  House,  providing  for  the  free  coinage  of  silver  into  standard  silver 
dollars  at  the  exact  ratio  of  16  to  I.  The  idea  was  to  make  it  exactly  16  to 
i.  The  ratio,  prevailing  at  the  time  silver  was  demonetized  was  15.98  to 
i,  which  as  stated  before,  is  still  the  legal  ratio.  Our  committee  was  not 
a  privileged  committee;  that  is,  we  were  not  authorized  to  report  at  any 
time  for  consideration.  Our  only  opportunity  for  consideration  was  during 
what  was  called  "the  morning  hour."  At  a  stated  time  each  morning 
committees  were  called  in  their  order  for  bills  for  consideration.  When  a 
bill  was  called  up  in  the  morning  hour,  only  one  hour  was  allotted  for  its 
consideration.  If  not  disposed  of  during  the  hour  it  went  over  and  was 
called  up  again  in  the  morning  hour  of  the  next  day,  and  so  on  from  day  to 
day  until  disposed  of.  This  bill  was  called  up  in  the  morning  hour,  but 
no  vote  could  be  reached  on  the  bill  because  of  "filibustering"  motions. 
A  motion  to  adjourn  and  a  roll  call  on  this  motion  would  consume  at  least 
half  an  hour.  Another  motion  would  be  made  for  a  recess  and  a  roll  call 
on  that  would  consume  at  least  another  half  hour.  Thus  two  roll  calls 
consumed  the  whole  hour,  defeating  a  vote  on  the  bill.  The  bill  was 
thus  "fillibustered"  for  about  three  months,  until  the  final  adjournment  of 
the  first  session  of  the  Forty- fourth  Congress  in  August,  i876.  The  chief 
actors  in  these  obstructive  tactics  were  A.  S.  Hewitt,  of  New  York,  and 
Eugene  Hale,  of  Maine.  The  Presidential  election  took  place  in  Novem- 


IOS  AN  AMERICAN  COMMONER. 

ber,  1 876,  and  also  the  election  of  members  to  the  Forty-fifth  Congress. 
I  was  elected  again  as  a  member  of  the  Forty-fifth  Congress.  The  Forty- 
fourth  Congress  held  its  last  or  short  session,  beginning  on  the  first 
Monday  in  December,  i876.  The  over-shadowing  question  during  that 
session  was  who  had  been  elected  President  of  the  United  States,  and  the 
great  contest  between  Mr.  Tilden  and  Mr.  Hayes  was  fought  out  during 
this  session.  About  a  week  after  the  assembling  of  the  last  session  of 
the  Forty-fourth  Congress  and  on  December  13,  i876,  I  offered  as  a 
substitute  for  the  Banks  bill  and  the  amendments,  a  bill  for  the  free  coinage 
of  silver  into  standard  silver -dollars,  371  1-4  grains  pure  silver,  or  412  1-2 
grains  standard  silver,  thus  restoring  the  old  dollar  at  the  old  ratio — the 
dollar  that  is  now  in  circulation.  This  substitute  was  adopted  by  the 
House  and  the  bill  passed.  It  was  sent  to  the  Senate,  but  was  never  taken 
up  or  acted  upon  in  the  Senate.  It  was  during  the  first  session  oi  the  Forty- 
fourth  Congress  that  the  Silver  commission  was  authorized,  by  joint  resolu 
tion,  August  5,  1 876,  to  inquire  into  the  silver  question  and  the  money 
question  generally.  This  commission  as  organized,  consisted  of  John  P. 
Jones,  Louis  V.  Bogy  and  George  S.  Boutwell,  of  the  Senate,  and  Randall 
L.  Gibson,  George  Willard  and  Richard  P.  Bland  on  the  part  of  the  House ; 
with  experts  from  private  life,  William  Groesbeck,  of  Ohio,  and  Prof. 
Bowen,  of  Massachusetts.  George  N.  Weston,  of  Maine,  was  appointed 
secretary.  This  commission  investigated  the  subject  of  the  demonetiza 
tion  of  silver,  making  an  exhaustive  report  to  Congress  on  March  2,  i877. 
The  Forty-fourth  Congress  adjourned  without  having  finally  acted  upon 
the  silver  question,  and  the  subject-matter  went  over  until  the  Forty-fifth 
Congress.  Mr.  Hayes  was  inaugurated  President  and  called  an  extra  ses 
sion  of  the  Forty-fifth  Congress  to  meet  on  the  fifteenth  of  October,  i877. 
Samuel  J.  Randall,  of  Pennsylvania,  was  elected  speaker  of  the  House.  On 
November  5,  of  this  special  session,  I  moved  the  suspension  of  the  rules 
and  had  passed"  a  bill  for  the  free  coinage  of  silver,  which  was  substantially 
the  same  as  the  House  had  passed  in  the  Forty-fourth  Congress.  The 


AN  AMERICAN  COMMONER.  109 

bill  went  to  the  Senate  and  Mr.  Allison,  from  the  committee  of  finance  in 
the  Senate,  reported  it  back,  striking  out  the  free  coinage  part  and  inserting 
a  provision  for  the  purchase  of  not  less  than  two  million  nor  more  than 
four  million  dollars,  worth  of  silver  bullion  per  month,  and  requiring  the 
bullion  to  be  coined  into  silver  dollars  provided  for  in  the  House  bill. 
The  bill  as  thus  amended,  passed  the  Senate  and  finally  passed  the  House. 
It  was  vetoed  by  President  Hayes,  but  was  passed  over  his  veto  in  both 
Houses  on  the  twenty-eighth  of  February,  i878,  thus  becoming  the  law 
commonly  known  as  the  "Bland-Allison  Act."  The  free  coinage  bill 
as  it  passed  the  House  received  more  than  a  two-thirds  vote.*  It  will 
be  observed  in  the  record  as  given  that  the  following  prominent  public 
men  voted  for  the  free  coinage  bill  as  it  passed  the  House :  Mr.  Cannon, 
of  Illinois,  a  member  elect  to  the  Fifty-fourth  Congress;  Mr.  Carlisle,  of 
Kentucky,  afterwards  secretary  of  the  treasury  under  Mr.  Cleveland; 
Mr.  Foster,  of  Ohio,  secretary  of  the  treasury  under  Mr.  Harrison's 
administration;  Mr.  Herbert,  afterwards  secretary  of  the  Navy;  Mr. 
McKinley,  afterwards  governor  of  Ohio  (and  President  of  the  United 
States);  Mr.  Mills,  of  Texas,  afterwards  senator  from  that  state;  and 
Mr.  Morrison,  of  Illinois,  afterwards  inter-state  commerce  commissioner. 
The  fact  that  most  of  these  gentlemen,  if  not  all  of  them,  subsequently 
changed  their  views  upon  this  question  should  be  attributed  to  the  un 
certainty  of  human  opinion  and  of  the  action  of  public  men;  for  surelv 
silver  restoration  is  as  meritorious  and  is  as  necessary  now  as  it  was 

then 

Congress  passed  a  concurrent  resolution  declaring  that,  under  the  law 
of  the  United  States,  bonds  issued  under  the  refunding  act  of  July  14, 
i87o,  and  the  resumption  act  of  July  14,  1875,  were  payable  at  the  option  of 
the  government  in  standard  silver  dollars,  412  1-2  grains,  or  in  gold  coin 
without  violation  of  public  faith.  This  resolution  was  passed  in  the 
Senate  by  yeas  43,  nays  22.  In  the  House  this  concurrent  resolution 

*It  required  two-thirds  to  suspend  the  rules  and  pass  it. 


1 10  AN  AMERICAN  COMMONER. 

passed,  yeas  189,  nays  7g,  thus  settling,  beyond  controversy,  so  far  as  the 
people's  representatives  in  Congress  were  concerned,  that  we  have  no 
public  debt  whatever  that  is  not  legally  payable  at  the  option  of  the  govern 
ment  in  the  standard  gold  and  silver  coins  now  struck  at  our  mints.  This 
fact  must  be  taken  into  account  as  it  was  taken  into  account  at  the  time 
when  the  question  of  the  ratio  was  under  consideration.  Our  debt  was 
based  upon  a  bimetallic  system  consisting  of  gold  and  silver,  with  the  free 
coinage  of  both  at  the  ratio  prevailing  in  i87o — the  present  legal  ratio 
15.98  to  i,  commonly  called  16  to  I.  The  fact  that  hostile  legislation  has 
depressed  and  depreciated  silver  bullion,  as  compared  to  gold  bullion, 
is  met  and  answered  by  the  other  fact  that  the  demonetization  of  silver  has 
caused  the  appreciation  of  gold,  and  has  made  the  difference  between 
the  bullion  value  of  gold  and  silver.  It  is  obvious  that  the  repeal  of  this 
legislation  will  restore  the  position  held  by  gold  and  silver  at  the  time  both 
had  free  coinage  at  our  mints,  and  that  both  can  be  coined  at  this  ratio 
without  doing  injustice  to  anyone.  The  relative  value  of  the  two  coins 
now  in  circulation  is  that  of  parity,  and  this  parity  would  be  maintained  as 
to  all  the  coins  that  would  be  put  into  circulation  under  the  bimetallic 
system  of  free  coinage  at  the  present  ratio. 

The  next  contest  fought  over  silver  was  of  a  minor  character,  relating 
to  the  retirement  and  recoinage  of  the  trade  dollars.  In  the  Forty-sixth 
Congress,  a  free  coinage  bill  was  reported  by  A.  J.  Warner,  of  Ohio. 
This  bill  was  debated  and  considered  for  some  days  and  finally  passed  the 
House  May  24,  1879,  yeas  114,  nays  97.  The  bill  was  never  acted  upon  in 
the  Senate.  The  next  fight  occurred  after  the  election  of  Mr.  Cleveland  in 
1884.  In  Mr.  Cleveland's  first  message,  after  he  was  elected  President, 
sent  to  the  Forty-ninth  Congress  in  which  Mr.  Carlisle  was  speaker,  he 
strongly  insisted  upon  the  repeal  or  suspension  of  the  coinage  of  silver  un 
der  what  is  called  the  Bland- Allison  act.  There  was  great  pressure  brought 
to  bear  on  Congress  to  secure  the  repeal  of  this  act.  The  demand  for  the 
repeal  of  this  act  came  from  the  same  sources  that  had  opposed  the 


AN  AMERICAN  COMMONER.  Ill 

restoration  of  the  coinage  of  the  standard  silver  dollar,  and  that  had  con 
tinuously  demanded  the  repeal  of  the  Bland-Allison  act.  It  originated 
in  the  bank  and  bondholding  circles  of  New  York,  the  chambers  of 
commerce  and  boards  of  trade  of  that  city.  With  the  metropolitan  press 
on  the  eastern  seaboard  demanding  the  repeal  of  the  silver  law,  an 
effort  was  then  made  to  create  an  alarm  throughout  the  country.  Indeed 
a  semi-panic  feeling  had  been  brought  about  by  the  clamors  of  the  money 
changers  in  New  York  and  throughout  the  east,  so  that  when  Congress 
met  in  December,  1885,  the  whole  country  was  roused  upon  the  silver 
question.  It  was  declared  by  the  gold  standard  people  that  -any  further 
coinage  of  the  standard  silver  dollar  would  bring  disaster  to  the  country. 
On  April  8,  1886,  a  vote  was  taken  on  a  proposition  to  suspend  the  coinage 
of  silver  dollars.  The  proposition  was  overwhelmingly  defeated  bv  a 
vote  of  84  in  favor  of  suspension  and  201  against  it;  and  a  free  coinage 
bill  offered  by  myself  was  defeated  by  a  vote  of  126  for  and  163  against 
it.  Thus  ended  the  effort  to  stop  the  coinage  of  silver;  and  thus  also 
terminated  the  endeavor  to  create  a  panic,  for  after  it  was  ascertained  that 
it  was  impossible  to  suspend  the  coinage  of  silver,  the  gold  standard  people 
ceased  their  croaking  and  the  country  went  on  as  usual.  The  next  battle 
fought  was  after  the  election  of  Mr.  Harrison  as  President;  and  in  the 
Fifty-first  Congress.  This  Congress  met  on  the  first  Monday  in  Decem 
ber,  1889;  Mr.  Reed,  of  Maine,  was  elected  speaker  of  the  House,  The 
first  vote  taken  in  this  Congress  was  on  June  5,  1890,  in  the  House  of 
Representatives,  on  the  bill  known  as  the  Windom  Silver  Bullion  Pur 
chase  bill.  Mr.  Conger,  the  chairman  of  the  committee  of  coins,  weights 
and  measures,  offered  a  substitute  for  the  Windom  bill.  The  Conger  bill 
was  also  a  bullion  purchase  bill,  not  a  free  coinage  bill.  I  moved  to 
recommit  this  bullion  purchase  bill,  with  instructions  that  the  committee 
on  coinage,  weights  and  measures  report  back  to  the  House  a  free  coinage 
bill.  This  motion  was  defeated,  yeas  116,  nays  140;  and  the  substitute 
offered  by  Mr.  Conger  was  then  passed,  yeas  135,  nays  119.  Among  the 


112  AN  AMERICAN   COMMONER. 

riembers  .who  voted  for  free  coinage  at  that  time,  and  were  afterwards 
members  of  the  next  House  (the  Fifty-fourth  Congress),  were  Mr. 
Abbott,  of  Texas ;  Mr.  Allen,  of  Mississippi ;  Mr.  Bankhead,  of  Alabama ; 
Mr.  Blanchard  (afterwards  a  senator  from  Louisiana) ;  Mr.  Catch- 
ings,  of  Mississippi;  Mr.  Clark,  of  Alabama;  Mr.  Cobb,  of  Alabama;  Mr. 
Craine,  of  Texas;  Mr.  Crisp,  of  Georgia;  Mr.  Culbertson,  of  Texas;  Mr. 
Dockery,  of  Missouri ;  Mr.  Herman,  of  Oregon ;  Mr.  Lester,  of  Georgia ; 
Mr.  McCreary,  of  Kentucky ;  Mr.  McCrea,  of  Arkansas ;  Mr.  Richardson, 
of  Tennessee;  Mr.  Robinson,  of  Louisiana;  Mr.  Sayers,  of  Texas;  Mr. 
Stockdale,  of  Mississippi;  Mr.  Tarsney,  of  Missouri;  Mr,  Tucker,  of 
Virginia;  Mr.  Turner,  of  Georgia;  Mr.  Washington,  of  Tennessee,  and 
Mr.  Wheeler,  of  Alabama.  The  Conger  bill  was  sent  to  the  Senate,  and 
while  the  bill  was  pending  in  the  Senate,  Mr.  Plumb,  of  Kansas  offered 
En  amendment  for  the  free  coinage  of  silver  which  was  agreed  to,  yeas  42, 
nays  25.  When  this  free  coinage  bill  was  sent  to  the  House  and  a  vote 
taken  on  it  (June  25),  it  was  defeated  by  a  vote  of  135  yeas  to  152  nays. 
A  conference  committee  was  appointed  on  the  part  of  the  two  Houses. 
A  majority  of  this  committee  agreed  to  a  bill  authorizing  the  purchase 
of  four  million  five  hundred  thousand  ounces  of  silver  bullion  every 
month,  and  the  issuance  of  treasury  notes  in  payment  for  the  bullion  so 
purchased.  This  bill  passed  both  Houses  and  became  what  is  commonly 
known  as  "the  Sherman  law."  The  total  amount  of  silver  purchased 
under  the  Sherman  act,  as  given  by  the  director  of  the  mint  in  his 
annual  report  for  the  year  1894,  was  168,674,682.53  ounces  of  fine  silver. 
This  report  shows  that  there  has  been  coined  of  this  bullion  38,531,143 
silver  dollars.  The  amount  wasted  by  the  assay  offices  and  sold  as 
"sweeps"  was  63,570.3?  ounces  fine  silver,  leaving  a  balance  on  November 
the  first  1894  of  138,809,681.28  ounces  fine  silver.  The  coining  value  of 
the  bullion  in  the  treasury,  according  to  this  report,  is  179,471,103  dollars, 
which  shows  a  gain  or  seigniorage  of  $54,369,719.36.  According  to 
the  report  of  the  director  of  the  mint  referred  to,  we  had  coined  up  to 


CHAMP  CLARK. 


ADL  A I  STEVENSON. 


J.  B.  WEAVER. 


HENRY  M.  TELLER. 


AN  AMERICAN  COMMONER.  113 

November  4,  1894,  under  what  is  known  as  the  Bland- Allison  act 
378,166,793  standard  silver  dollars;  and  under  the  act  of  July  4,  1890, 
or  what  is  called  the  Sherman  law,  $38,531,143;  and  out  of  the  trade  dollar 
bullion  we  had  coined  $5,o78,472,  making  the  total  coinage  of  the  standard 
silver  dollars  to  that  time  (November,  1894),  $421,776,408.  The  amount 
of  standard  silver  dollars  coined  since  that  time  will  not  greatly  change  the 
above  total. 

The  next  battle  of  the  silver  question  was  at  the  second  session  of 
this  Congress,  the  Fifty-first.  Senator  Stewart,  of  Nevada,  moved  to 
lay  aside  the  Federal  Election  bill,  then  pending  in  the  Senate,  and  to 
take  up  Free  Coinage  bill,  Number  4675.  To  this  bill  Mr.  Vest,  of  Mis 
souri,  offered  a  substitute  for  free  coinage,  which  was  agreed  to,  yeas  39, 
nays  27.  This  free  coinage  bill  came  to  the  House  and  was  referred  to 
the  committee  on  coinage,  weights  and  measures.  After  protracted  delay 
in  the  committee,  Mr.  Conger,  the  chairman  of  the  committee,  reported 
the  bill  back  with  an  adverse  recommendation  and  no  further  action 
was  taken.  The  next  (Fifty-second)  Congress,  assembled  the  first  Mon 
day  in  December,  1891  and  elected  Mr.  Crisp,  of  Georgia,  speaker  of  the 
House.  There  was  a  great  contest  over  the  silver  question,  at  the  first 
session  of  this  Congress,  pending  the  Presidential  election.  The  Com 
mittee  on  Coinage,  Weights  and  Measures  reported  a  free  coinage  bill,  • 
which  was  taken  up  and  considered  by  the  House  for  three  days,  and  on 
the  evening  of  the  third  day,  I  moved  the  previous  question  on  its  final 
passage.  Mr.  Burroughs,  of  Michigan,  moved  to  lay  on  the  table.  On 
this  motion,  the  vote  was  148  for  tabling  the  bill  and  148  against  it.  The 
speaker  voted  against  tabling  the  bill,  making  the  vote  stand  for  tabling 
148  and  149  against  it.  "Filibustering"  was  then  resorted  to  by  motions  to 
reconsider  the  vote  to  table  the  bill,  motions  for  adjournment  and  for 
recess.  These  motions  were  interposed  until  it  became  evident  that  no  vote 

could  be  had  on  the  bill  without  a  cloture  rule.     The  House,  at  a  late 
& 


114  AN  AMERICAN  COMMONER. 

hour  of  night,  adjourned  with  the  understanding  that  the  committee  on 
rules  would  bring  in  a  cloture  rule  for  the  purpose  of  bringing  the  bill  to 
a  final  vote.  No  such  rule,  however,  was  reported  and  no  final  vote  was 
taken  upon  the  bill  at  that  time.  In  the  Senate,  however,  during  this 
session,  and  in  July,  1892,  they  took  up  and  passed  a  free  coinage  bill  by  a 
vote  of,  yeas  29,  nays  25.  This  bill  was  sent  to  the  House  and  referred, 
on  July  5,  to  the  committee  on  coinage,  weights  and  measures.  The 
coinage  committee  reported  the  bill  back  to  the  House  with  the  recom 
mendation  that  it  should  pass.  The  committee  on  rules  brought  in 
a  cloture  rule  for  the  purpose  of  compelling  a  vote  upon  this  bill ;  but  the 
resolution  was  defeated  by  a  vote  of  136  yeas,  154  nays.  This  defeated 
the  consideration  of  the  bill  and  no  further  attempt  was  made  to  pass  it. 
The  Presidential  election  of  1892  took  place  immediately  after  the  adjourn 
ment  of  the  first  session  of  the  Fifty-second  Congress,  and  resulted  in  the 
election  of  Mr.  Cleveland  over  Mr.  Harrison.  Immediately  after  the 
election  of  Mr.  Cleveland,  the  anti-silver  forces  of  the  country  organized 
for  the  purpose  of  securing  the  repeal  of  the  purchase  clause  of  the 
so-called  Sherman  law.  The  bankers  and  bondholders  of  this  country, 
aided  and  supported  by  the  bankers  and  bondholders  of  Europe,  de 
liberately  set  to  work  to  bring  on  a  stringency  in  the  money  market  and 
to  raise  a  hue  and  cry  against  silver  as  the  cause  of  the  pressure.  The 
"financiers"  of  London  induced  the  Government  of  England  to  suspend 
the  free  coinage  of  silver  for  India.  This  was  done  early  in  the  summer  of 
1893,  and  evidently  for  the  purpose  of  affecting  legislation  in  this  country 
on  the  silver  question.  No  sooner  had  the  British  Government  suspended 
free  coinage  of  silver  in  India  than  this  fact  was  seized  upon  by  the  gold 
standard  people  in  this  country  as  a  further  excuse  for  making  war  on 
silver  here.  This  fight  on  silver  caused  great  consternation  ihroughout 
the  country  and  the  world.  To  give  a  further  "object  lesson,"  as  it  was 
called — to  teach  the  people  the  bad  effects  of  silver  coinage,  the  banking 
institutions  of  England  and  of  this  country  began  a  systematic  process  of 


AN  AMERICAN   COMMONER.  1 15 

hoarding  money,  drawing  in  their  loans  and  refusing  advances  to  their 
customers,  thus  precipitating  what  was  called — and  properly  called — a 
bankers'  panic.  Probably  it  was  not  intended  to  bring  about  such  a  severe 
panic  as  ensued,  but  the  people  generally  became  alarmed,  not  because 
they  were  afraid  of  silver  or  silver  money,  or  that  they  distrusted  our 
money  in  any  sense.  On  the  contrary,  in  their  eagerness  to  possess  their 
own  money  and  hold  it  safely  they  made  a  run  on  the  banks  and  withdrew 
their  deposits,  showing  that  it  was  the  banks  they  were  afraid  of  and  not 
the  money  of  the  country.  These  runs  upon  banking  institutions  caused 
many  to  fail  and  wide-spread  and  disastrous  panic  ensued.  The  "object 
lesson"  was  now  complete.  England  had  done  her  part  in  stopping  the 
coinage  of  silver  in  India.  The  banking  institutions  of  this  country  and 
the  eastern  metropolitan  press  had  terrorized  the  people  into  a  gen 
eral  panic.  The  President  called  Congress  together  amid  all  this  excitement 
and  demanded  in  his  call  the  repeal  of  the  Sherman  law  which  he  attacked 
as  the  sole  cause  of  all  monetary  difficulties  in  the  country.  Congress 
assembled  in  special  session,  under  the  call  of  the  President,  on  August  7, 
1893.  The  President's  message  to  Congress  demanded  the  unconditional 
repeal  of  the  Sherman  law,  insisting  that  with  that  law  wiped  from  the 
statute  books  prosperity  would  again  come  to  the  people.  This  \\as  the  most 
critical  time  for  silver  and  silver  legislation  since  the  demonetization  act  of 
1873.  The  friends  of  silver  in  this  country  and  the  world  knew  that  the 
suspension  of  the  free  coinage  of  silver  in  India,  coupled  with  the  suspen 
sion  of  all  purchases  and  coinage  in  this  country,  would  contract  the 
currency  throughout  the  world,  cause  panics  in  the  silver  market  and 
force  a  further  divergence  between  the  relative  value  of  gold  and  silver. 
The  friends  of  bimetallism  also  knew  that  this  war  on  silver  would  nec 
essarily  make  a  great  demand  for  gold  and  thus  send  gold  up  in  the 
market.  Should  gold  be  the  sole  standard  of  valuation,  the  advance  of  gold, 
which  is  but  another  name  for  the  depreciation  in  the  price  of  all  property, 
except  mortgages,  bonds  and  taxes,  would  be  ruinous  to  the  country. 


Il6  AN  AMERICAN  COMMONER. 

Mr.  Wilson,  of  West  Virginia,  on  August  n,  1893,  introduced  a  bill  "to 
repeal  a  part  of  an  act  approved  July  14,  1890,  entitled  'An  act  directing  the 
purchase  of  silver  bullion  and  the  issuing  of  treasury  notes  thereon,  and  for 
other  purposes/  }  This  bill  provided  for  the  repeal  of  so  much  of  the 
Sherman  law  as  authorized  the  secretary  of  the  treasury  to  purchase 
monthly  four  million  five  hundred  thousand  ounces  of  silver  bullion  and 
issue  treasury  notes  in  payment  for  the  bullion.  To  this  bill,  which  under 
an  order  of  the  House,  was  debated  for  two  weeks,  I  offered  a  substitute, 
submitting  a  free  coinage  proposition  at  various  ratios  beginning  with 
1 6  to  I  and  going  up  to  i7,  18,  19,  and  20  to  i.  To  set  forth  the  truth 
of  the  history  of  this  fight  for  the  repeal  of  the  Sherman  law,  it  u  necessary 
to  say  that  the  friends  of  free  coinage  had  no  hopes  of  securing  the  enact 
ment  of  a  free  coinage  law.  It  was  well  known  that  Mr.  Cleveland  would 
veto  such  a  bill.  It  was  vainly  hoped,  however,  that  we  could  secure 
some  amendment  to  the  repeal  bill  that  would  either  result  in  the  defeat  of 
the  bill  or  greatly  mitigate  the  consequences  of  the  repeal.  Hence,  while 
we  were  in  favor  of  the  free  coinage  of  silver  at  the  present  legal  ratio 
of  1 6  to  i,  we  did  not  hesitate  to  offer  and  vote  for  ratios  up  to  20  to  i, 
believing  that  any  amendments  to  a  bill  of  this  character  would  result  in 
the  defeat  of  the  repeal.  Again,  it  was  desirable  to  test  the  sincerity  of 
those  who  were  fighting  silver  coinage  at  the  present  ratio,  by  compelling 
them  to  vote  for  free  coinage  at  a  greater  ratio,  or  to  show  the  insincerity 
of  their  professed  friendship  for  bimetallism.  The  result  of  this  experi 
ment  showed  that  practically  the  only  real  friends  of  bimetallism  were 
those  who  advocated  and  adhered  to  the  justice  of  free  coinage  of  silver 
at  the  present  legal  ratio.  The  vote  for  free  coinage  at  1 6  to  i,  or  the 
present  legal  ratio,  showed,  yeas  125,  nays  227;  for  free  coinage  at  i7  to  i, 
yeas,  100,  nays  240;  18  to  i,  yeas  102,  nays  239;  19  to  i,  yeas  105,  nays  239; 
at  20  to  i,  yeas  122,  nays  222.  It  is  shown  by  this  record  that  the 
strongest  proposition  before  the  House  was  for  free  coinage  at  the 
present  legal  ratio;  that  no  gains  were  made  by  any  attempted  change 


AN  AMERICAN  COMMONER.  II 7 

of  the  ratio,  but  on  the  contrary  it  weakened  the  coinage  proposition. 
After  all  free  coinage  propositions  were  voted  down,  I  offered  a  further 
amendment  restoring  the  law  of  February  28,  i878.  On  this  proposition 
the  yeas  were  136,  nays  223.  After  all  amendments  were  voted  down, 
the  repeal  bill  passed  the  House  by  a  vote  of  239  yeas,  and  108  nays. 
This  extraordinary  proceeding  and  extraordinary  vote  against  silver  was 
one  of  the  most  remarkable  transactions  that  ever  took  place  in  the  Ameri 
can  Congress.  Impartial  history  would  show  that  this  result  was  secured  by 
methods  as  deplorable  as  they  were  extraordinary.  The  moneyed  power  of 
this  country  and  Europe  had  sought  to  bring  the  people  and  their  represen 
tatives  into  complete  subjection.  Debtors  everywhere  were  threatened  with 
the  pressure  of  foreclosures  and  bankruptcy;  the  owners  of  money  ab 
solutely  refused  relief  to  the  people.  A  corner  on  money  had  been 
established;  business  was  prostrated  in  every  section  of  the  land;  a  reign 
of  terror  was  thus  brought  about.  Resolutions  were  formulated  in  blank 
in  Wall  Street  and  telegraphed  to  the  various  chambers  of  commerce 
and  boards  of  trade  throughout  the  country  (to  be  adopted),  demanding  the 
repeal  of  the  purchase  clause  of  the  Sherman  Act.  The  vast  private  debt 
existing  throughout  the  country  was  pressed  for  collection,  and  when 
debtors  went  to  the  banks  to  secure  loans  to  meet  their  obligations,  they 
were  coolly  told  that  it  was  not  safe  to  loan  money  until  the  repeal  of 
the  purchase  clause  of  the  Sherman  Act.  It  was  insisted  by  the  money 
lenders  that  so  soon  as  this  act  was  repealed  money  would  be  plentiful, 
that  it  would  be  loaned  without  stint  and  that  prosperity  would  immediately 
return.  This  pressure  induced  the  people  to  petition  Congress  for  the 
repeal  of  this  act,  and  the  result  of  it  all  was  an  overwhelming  vote  in 
the  House  for  its  repeal.  The  bill  went  to  the  Senate ;  there  it  met  with  a 
stubborn  opposition,  for  at  the  time  the  bill  passed  the  House  and  went 
to  the  Senate,  it  was  well  known  and  understood  that  a  majority  of 
senators  were  opposed  to  the  repeal;  but  the  same  pressure  was  used  to 
force  the  bill  through  the  Senate  which  was  resorted  to  in  the  House. 


Il8  AN  AMERICAN  COMMONER. 

All  offers  of  compromise  were  spurned  and  unconditional  repeal  was 
demanded.  Without  it,  the  money  that  was  hoarded  and  cornered  would 
have  been  held  until  an  impoverished  people  were  brought  into  subjection 
and  compelled  to  yield.  The  repeal  bill  that  passed  the  House  was  sent 
to  the  Senate  and  reported  substantially,  as  it  passed  the  House  on  August 
28,  by  Mr.  Voorhees,  the  chairman  of  the  finance  committee.  The  bill  was 
taken  up  and  debated  in  the  Senate  and  various  amendments  were  offered 
to  it  and  voted  down.  It  finally  passed  the  Senate  with  some  slight 
amendments  reported  by  the  finance  committee  on  the  thirtieth  cf  October. 
The  House  agreed  to  these  amendments  and  the  bill  finally  passed  the 
House  of  Representatives  on  November  the  first,  and  was  approved  by 
the  President  on  the  second  day  of  November,  1893.  The  debates  that 
took  place  in  the  House  and  Senate  on  this  bill  constituted  what  was 
probably  the  ablest  and  most  prolonged  discussion  of  the  money  question 
that  ever  took  place  in  any  parliamentary  body.  The  friends  of  silver 
predicted  then  precisely  what  has  taken  place.  They  predicted  a  great 
appreciation  of  gold,  a  depreciation  of  prices,  hard  times  and  business 
stagnation,  as  the  result  of  silver  demonetization.  These  things  came  to 
pass.  The  friends  of  gold  monometallism  insisted  that  the  repeal  of  the 
purchase  clause  of  the  Sherman  act,  the  declaration  made  in  favor  of 
eliminating  silver  as  standard  money  and  for  the  change  to  the  gold 
standard  of  payments,  would  restore  confidence  throughout  the  country, 
invite  an  inflow  of  gold  and  bring  universal  prosperity.  Just  the  reverse 
occurred.  We  were  compelled  to  sell  bonds*  to  the  amount  of  $162,000,000 
soon  after  the  repeal  in  order  to  check  the  flow  of  gold  from  cur  shores 
and  to  maintain  the  single  gold  standard.  People  everywhere  have  been 
out  of  employment  and  business  prostration  generally  prevailing;  unrest 
and  discontent  with  this  legislation  still  exists,  and  the  great  masses  of 
the  people  believe  to-day  that  their  only  hope  for  future  prosperity  is  a 
full  and  complete  restoration  of  silver  coinage.  The  gold  monometallists 

*k'To  sell  bonds" — 5.  e.,  to  borrow  money,  thus  putting  the  gold  standard  itself  on  a  credit  basis. 


AN  AMERICAN  COMMONER.  119 

have  given  the  people  an  object  lesson  indeed — one  they  will  not  forget — 
an  object  lesson  that  has  been  the  best  education  in  favor  of  bimetallism 
that  could  possibly  have  been  given. 

The  next  great  contest  came  in  the  House  of  Representatives  in  the 
first  regular  session  of  this  same  Congress.  This  fight  occurred  on  what 
is  commonly  called  the  "Seigniorage  Bill."  This  bill  provided  for  the 
coinage  of  all  silver  bullion  held  in  the  treasury,  purchased  under  the 
provision  of  the  Sherman  act;  that  the  seigniorage  or  gain  arising  from  the 
purchase  of  this  bullion,  amounting  to  about  $55,000,000,  should  be  first 
coined  and  used  in  payment  of  public  expenses;  that  after  the  coinage 
of  the  seigniorage,  the  remainder  of  the  bullion  should  be  coined  as  fast  as 
possible,  and  the  coin  used  for  the  purpose  of  redeeming  the  treasury  notes 
issued  for  the  purchase  of  the  bullion.  This  bill  was  taken  up  February 
7,  1894,  and  debated  for  several  days,  but  when  an  attempt  was  made  to 
bring  the  House  to  vote  upon  the  bill,  fillibustering  motions  were  resorted 
to,  led  by  Mr.  Tracey,  of  New  York  and  Mr.  Reed,  of  Maine;  and  the 
bill  was  thus  tied  up  in  the  House  from  February  7,  until  the  twenty- 
eighth  of  that  month,  when  the  committee  on  rules  reported  a  rule  cutting 
off  all  fillibustering  motions,  bringing  the  House  to  a  direct  vote.  This  rule 
was  adopted  and  a  vote  compelled  upon  the  bill  and  its  amendments. 
The  House  voted  down  various  amendments  and  motions  to  recommit 
and  finally  passed  the  bill  by  a  vote  of  yeas  168,  nays  129.  The  bill 
went  to  the  Senate  March  5,  1894;  and  was  taken  up  and  passed  pre 
cisely  as  it  passed  the  House,  the  vote  in  the  Senate  being  yeas  44,  nays  31. 
This  bill  was  vetoed  by  the  president  and  taken  up  in  the  House  April  4; 
and  on  a  roll  call  to  pass  the  bill,  notwithstanding  the  objections  of  the 
president,  the  yeas  were  144,  nays  114.  The  constitution  requiring  two- 
thirds  to  pass  a  bill  over  the  veto  of  the  president,  the  bill  failed.  The  first 
session  of  this  Congress  adjourned  without  further  action  on  the  silver 
question.  Before  the  re-assembling  of  the  Fifty-third  Congress  the  first 
Monday  in  December,  1894,  in  the  short  session  the  bankers  and  money 


120  AN  AMERICAN  COMMONER. 

brokers  of  Wall  Street  and  Europe  set  to  work  to  bring  pressure  on  Con 
gress  to  compel  the  retirement  of  greenbacks,  and  the  utter  degradation  of 
silver,  by  issuing  bonds  payable  specifically  in  gold.  The  national  banks 
and  the  so-called  state  banks  under  national  control,  which  in  reality  would 
be  national  banks  if  they  exist  at  all,  under  what  is  called  "the  Carlisle 
plan,"  commenced  to  rid  the  treasury  of  its  gold  as  an  "object  lesson"  to 
show  the  necessity  of  wiping  out  all  paper  money,  greenbacks,  silver  certifi 
cates,  and  in  effect,  standard  silver  dollars  as  money — insisting  that  all  these 
forms  of  money  were  but  obligations  on  the  treasury  to  be  payable  in  gold 
on  demand;  that  therefore  to  prevent  these  demands  on  the  treasury  for 
gold,  all  forms  of  our  money  should  be  withdrawn  and  funded  into  bonds 
except  gold  and  bank  notes.*  The  relation  this  fight  had  to  the  silver  ques 
tion  is  apparent.  The  bond  holders  and  money  lenders  of  this  country 
and  Europe  are  determined,  if  they  can  possibly  bring  it  about,  to  compel 
this  government  to  abandon  its  sovereign  power  of  coining  money  and 
issuing  it  by  the  treasury  itself,  except  gold,  and  to  turn  over  to  bond 
holders  and  banking  corporations  of  Europe,  the  control  of  the  volume  of 
our  money.  These  various  propositions,  however,  were  defeated  one  after 
another.  So  that  the  question  now  remains  for  the  people  to  determine  in 
their  future  elections  for  President  and  Congress  which  system  shall  pre 
vail  ;  that  is  to  say,  whether  we  are  to  have  the  free  and  unlimited  coinage 
of  both  gold  and  silver — the  money  of  our  Constitution,  the  supply  of 
which  must  come  from  the  people's  government — or  whether  we  are  to 
abandon  the  bimetallic  system  and  enter  upon  a  system  that  contemplates 
nothing  but  gold  as  legal  tender  money,  and  bank  notes  issued  by  corpora 
tions  to  supplement  it.  This  is  the  future  fight  on  the  money  question, 
and  that  question  now  is  paramount  to  all  others  and  the  voters  must  take 
sides  for  one  system  or  the  other.  In  reviewing  the  history  of  the  bat 
tles  on  the  money  question  in  Congress  for  the  past  twenty  years,  a  true 
story  can  not  be  told  without  alluding  to  the  political  situation  during  that 

*See  Act  of  1900. 


AN  AMERICAN  COMMONER.  121 

time.  Unhappily  our  great  contests  in  presidential  elections  heretofore 
have  been  fought  out  upon  "war  issues,"  growing  out  of  our  unhappy 
civil  strife.  It  is  known  that  the  people  of  the  south — a  great  agricultural 
community — have  been  from  the  commencement  steadfast  sympathizers 
and  friends  of  silver  coinage.  So  it  may  be  said  of  the  southwest  and  our 
great  gold  and  silver  producing  regions,  but  these  forces  have  not  found  a 
way  to  make  their  combined  strength  effective.  In  all  the  great  battles  in 
Congress  on  the  silver  question  the  force  of  circumstances  has  made  oppo 
nents  of  those  who  should  have  been  friends.  The  southern  people,  while 
enthusiastic  for  silver,  have  had  that  sympathy  and  enthusiasm  clouded 
by  the  dread  of  Force  bills  or  Federal  interference  with  their  right  of  local 
self-government.  Doubtful  as  to  whether  their  safety  depended  on  alli 
ance  with  New  York  and  the  east  for  protection  in  their  local  rights,  or 
whether  to  follow  where  nature  led  them,  they  have  hesitated  on  the 
threshold  of  victory  for  silver.  Fortunately,  however,  in  their  great 
battle  over  the  Force  bill  in  the  Senate,  the  senators  of  the  west, 
and  especially  of  the  gold  and  silver  mining  states,  in  their  opposi 
tion  to  this  measure,  which  resulted  in  its  final  overthrow  and  defeat,  gave 
assurance  to  the  people  of  the  south  that  their  political  reliance,  both  for 
the  safety  of  their  home  institutions  and  their  prosperity  on  economic 
questions,  should  be  the  west.  We  do  not  intend  to  draw  sectional  lines 
further  than  those  who  insist  on  the  single  gold  standard  have  forced  upon 
us  this  situation.  The  great  money  centers  of  the  east,  whose  banking 
institutions  are  dominated,  if  not  owned  and  controlled,  by  European  bank 
ing  houses,  have  forced  the  people  of  the  west  and  the  south,  in  self- 
defense,  to  make  war  upon  their  system  of  finance.  The  day  has  now  come 
when  war  issues  can  no  longer  dominate  our  politics.  The  great  political 
battles  of  the  future  will  be  fought  on  economic  questions.  The  battle  of  the 
standards  is  the  greatest  battle  to  be  fought  in  this  country  and  the  world 
over.  The  enslaved  masses  of  the  old  world,  look  naturally  to  this  free 
people  to  lead  the  way.  This  vast  country  of  ours  of  forty-four  independ- 


122  AN  AMERICAN  COMMONER. 

ent  states,  with  a  population  of  seventy  millions  of  people,  increasing  at 
the  rate  of  more  than  a  million  annually,  is  strong  enough  to  maintain  its 
own  monetary  system,  to  open  the  mints  to  the  free  coinage  of  gold  and 
silver,  and  thus  again  restore,  not  only  to  ourselves,  but  to  the  world,  the 
old  order  of  things  by  which  gold  and  silver  circulated  side  by  side,  aiding 
and  supporting  each  other  in  giving  labor  employment  and  effecting  the  ex 
changes  of  commerce.  In  conclusion,  attention  should  be  called  to  the  fact 
that  heretofore  no  president  of  the  United  States,  since  1873,  has  been  a 
friend  of  silver.  Mr.  Hayes  vetoed  a  limited  coinage  bill.  It  is  well 
known  that  every  president  since  has  been  hostile  to  free  coinage  and  would 
veto  any  such  bill  if  sent  to  him.  This  has  had  the  effect  of  discouraging 
Congress  in  all  these  great  contests.  I  have  reason  to  believe  that  silver 
would  have  long  ago  been  restored  to  its  old  place  in  our  system  of  money 
had  there  been  a  president  of  the  United  States  favorable  to  it.  The  bat 
tle  to  be  fought  and  the  all  important  point  to  gain  is  to  secure  a  president 
who  will  sign  a  free  coinage  bill  if  sent  to  him ;  who  will  not  use  the  power 
and  patronage  of  his  office  to  prevent  such  a  bill  coming  to  him,  but  on  the 
contrary  will  give  encouragement  to  such  legislation.  If  we  can  once  se 
cure  such  a  president,  the  battle  is  won. 


CHAPTER  XIII. 

The  "Whirling  Dervish  of  the  Market"  as  a  Factor  in  Public  Affairs. — Henry  Dem- 
arest  Lloyd  and  Richard  Brinsley  Sheridan  on  the  Speculative  Use  of  the  Co 
ercive  Power  of  Government. — "The  Meanness  of  the  Pedlar  and  the  Profligacy  of 
the  Pirate."— Trade  as  War. — Commercial  Use  of  the  War-Making,  Debt-Making 
and  Tax-Levying  Power  of  the  People. — Can  Selfishness  be  "Enlightened?" — 
The  Question  of  Forcing  Unselfishness  by  Law. — Socialism  or  Coerced  Co-op 
eration. — Bland  as  a  Representative  of  Free  Co-operation  and  Unrestricted  De 
velopment. — Increasing  Honesty  and  Liberality  in  Trade. — "Laissez  Faire"  as  a 
Policy  of  Unsurrendering  Resistance  to  Restriction,  Obstruction  and  Oppression. 
— The  Foundation  Principle  of  all  True  Political  and  Social  Economy  the  Ob 
servance  of  the  Right  of  Individual  Growth  and  of  Fuller  Expansion  for  the  Con 
structive  Powers  of  Common  Humanity. — Liberty  Impossible  for  the  Unjust. 


HILDREN  yet,  writes  Mr.  Henry  Demarest  Lloyd,  "we  run 
everything  we  do — love  or  war,  work  or  leisure,  religion  or 
liberty — to  excess.  Every  possibility  of  body  and  mind  must 
be  played  upon  until  it  is  torn  to  pieces  as  toys  by  children. 
Priests,  voluptuaries,  tyrants,  knights,  ascetics — in  the  long  procession  of 
fanatics  a  newcomer  takes  his  place.  He  is  called  'the  model  merchant' — 
the  crudest  fanatic  in  history.  He  is  the  high  priest  of  the  latest  idolatry — 
the  self-worship  of  self-interest.  Whirling  dervish  of  the  market — self, 
friends,  family,  body,  and  soul,  loves,  hopes,  and  faith — all  are  sacrificed 
to  seeing  how  many  turns  he  can  make  before  he  drops  dead." 

These  are  extraordinary  sentences,  written  by  a  man  of  unusual  pow 
ers  after  an  analysis  of  the  commercialism  which  operated  during  the  quar 
ter  of  a  century  which  elapsed  between  the  demonetization  act  of  1873  an^ 
that  of  1900. 

The  same  idea  has  been  even  more  forcibly  expressed  by  Richard 
Brinsley  Sheridan.  Taught  by  Burke  to  abhor  militant  commercialism  as 
tyranny  in  its  worst  form,  he  asserted  the  force  of  his  intellect  against  the 
tendency  of  the  English  aristocracy  of  his  day  to  change  the  base  of  its 

123 


124  AN    AMERICAN    COMMONER. 

privileges  from  the  feudalism  of  land-tenure  to  that  of  the  corporation 
system. 

"There  is  something,"  he  said  of  the  East  India  Company,  "in  the 
frame  and  constitution  of  the  company  which  extends  the  sordid  princi 
ples  of  their  origin  over  all  their  successive  operations,  connecting  with 
their  civil  policies  and  even  with  their  boldest  achievements  the  meanness 
of  a  pedlar  and  the  profligacy  of  pirates.  Alike  in  the  political  and  mili 
tary  line  could  be  observed  auctioneering  embassadors  and  trading  gen 
erals.  And  thus  we  saw  revolution  brought  about  by  affidavits ;  an  army 
employed  in  executing  an  arrest;  a  town  besieged  on  a  note  of  hand — a 
prince  dethroned  for  a  balance  of  account !  Thus  it  was  that  they  exhibited 
a  government  which  united  the  mock  majesty  of  a  bloody  sceptre  and  the 
little  traffic  of  a  merchant  counting-house — wielding  a  truncheon  in  one 
hand  and  picking  a  pocket  with  the  other."* 

These  sentences,  like  those  of  Mr.  Lloyd,  are  intended  to  apply  as  the 
expression  of  a  demand  for  exact  justice  against  a  system.  They  are  not 
mere  rhetoric.  Within  their  limitations  they  are  a  scientific  expression  of 
a  fundamental  truth  of  morals  and  of  social  economy. 

If  it  is  necessarily  true  that  "trade  is  war"  in  another  form;  if  the 
theory  which  governed  American  speculation  and  the  politics  depending  on 
it  from  1860  to  1900  is  the  true  theory  of  the  economy  of  distribution,  then 
there  is  no  need  to  go  beyond  Sheridan  and  no  possibility  of  going  beyond 
Lloyd  to  find  the  reality  of  individual  character  and  of  political  policy 
during  this  half-century  of  commercial  use  of  the  war-making,  debt-mak 
ing,  taxing  and  money-issuing  power. 

If  it  is  true,  as  was  once  asserted  in  the  United  States  Senate  by  a 
representative  of  the  policies  against  which  Mr.  Bland  contended,  that  trade 
is  a  matter  of  taking  the  largest  possible  advantage,  then  those  who  use 
the  coercive  powers  of  government  for  trade  purposes  have  no  appeal  from 
such  judgments  as  those  of  Lloyd  and  Sheridan;  for  it  is  by  their  own 
standards  that  they  are  condemned. 

*World's  Best  Orations,  Vol.  X,  3943. 


AN  AMERICAN  COMMONER.  125 

Such  a  theory  of  trade,  shows  its  absurdity,  as  soon  as  it  is  critically 
examined.  All  fair  trade  is  the  distribution  of  wealth  from  the  producer 
to  the  consumer  in  the  way  that  gives  the  largest  possible  advantage  ( I ) 
to  the  producer,  (2)  to  the  distributor,  and,  (3)  to  the  consumer.  If  there 
is  no  cheating,  no  taking  advantage  by  private  fraud  and  coercion,  or  by 
the  far  worse  fraud  and  coercion  which  is  exercised  through  government, 
all  are  benefited  by  a  process  without  which  neither  society  nor  liberty  in 
society,  nor  evolution  through  liberty  could  exist  at  all. 

Two  radical  mistakes  are  made  by  holders  of  opposing  theories.  One 
is  that  it  is  safe  to  trust  "enlightened  selfishness."  The  other  is  that  sel 
fishness  which  can  not  be  checked  by  government  in  individuals  can  be 
controlled  by  giving  it  expression  through  government. 

As  men  can  become  enlightened  only  in  the  measure  in  which  they 
cease  to  be  selfish,  the  first  theory  of  trade  regulation  rests  on  a  fault  of 
definition.  The  latter  half  of  the  nineteenth  century  has  been  character 
ized  by  the  highest  intelligence  shown  in  trade.  But  no  one  who  will  ex 
amine  the  results  of  political  commercialism  will  say  that  this  intelligence 
involved  enlightenment  or  that  its  exercise  could  have  educated  any  other 
than  those  reactionary  faculties  in  the  individual  which  make  for  his  final 
destruction. 

The  contending  theory  of  trade — one  apt  to  be  held  by  men  of  benevo 
lent  disposition  and  poetic  temperament,  is  equally  a  result  of  illogical  defi 
nition  ;  for  the  government  on  which  they  rely  for  the  suppression  of  sel 
fishness  is  itself  necessarily  an  expression  of  selfishness  to  the  extent  it 
attempts  to  coerce  co-operation  or  to  regulate  co-operation  by  coercion 
further  than  is  necessary  to  prevent  fraud  or  violence. 

No  system  of  government  which  could  be  devised,  no  theory  of  econ 
omy  which  could  be  applied  through  it,  would  stand'  the  strain  of  results 
necessarily  proceeding  from  the  spirit  of  ruthlessness,  of  rapacity,  of  reck 
lessness  which  governed  the  speculative  and  non-productive  commercial 
ism  against  which  Mr.  Eland's  whole  life  was  a  protest.  In  contrast  to 


126  AN  AMERICAN   COMMONER. 

its  spirit,  he  opposed  his  own  moderation  of  speech,  his  gentleness  of 
temper,  his  unwillingness  to  take  even  the  smallest  advantage  where  the 
greatest  was  possible,  his  inflexible  adherence  to  principles  and  his  habitual 
refusal  to  force  issues  to  an  extreme  of  destructiveness. 

The  spirit  he  represented  in  politics  showed  itself  in  trade  also;  and 
in  trade  as  in  politics  it  has  its  manifestation  in  all  the  constructive  results 
of  the  century.  Every  man  who  gave  another  willingly  a  fair  return  of 
service  for  service  done  was  a  part  of  its  enormous  forces.  These  forces — 
the  natural,  evolutionary  forces  of  free  co-operation,  are  superior  to  all 
coercive  government  and  the  measure  in  which  they  are  able  to  find  ex 
pression  through  an  increase  in  the  world's  moral  sense,  is  necessarily  the 
measure  of  the  suppression  of  the  coercive  powers  of  government. 

While  we  can  not  avoid  apprehension  because  of  the  results  of  the 
past  and  the  menace  for  the  future  due  to  the  increase  in  the  intelligence 
of  those  who  apply  themselves  to  trade  without  moral  restraint,  it  is  clear 
that  as  trade  means  the  distribution  of  the  necessaries  and  comforts  of 
life,  it  involves  the  willingness  of  a  continually  increasing  number  of  men 
to  give  a  fair  return  for  what  they  take  from  others.  There  is  a  smaller 
but  also  a  constantly  increasing  class  which  in  every  trade,  sees  its  own 
highest  interests  in  giving  a  quality  of  product  representing  a  higher  skill 
and  intelligence  than  that  represented  by  the  labor  of  those  it  is  supplying. 
Where  it  is  a  question  between  losing  a  little  and  cheating  a  little  there  is 
undoubtedly  an  increasing  number  of  "model  merchants"  who  would 
rather  lose  a  little,  and  a  still  larger  number  who  would  rather  not 
trade  at  all  than  to  cheat  at  all.  These  are  not  the  "whirling  der 
vishes  of  the  market"  so  picturesquely  described  by  Mr.  Lloyd.  Un 
fortunately  the  sane  and  honest  often  confound  themselves  with  the 
dervishes  when  issues  are  forced  they  have  not  had  time  to  understand. 
Had  it  been  otherwise,  Mr.  Eland's  work  might  have  advanced  America 
far  into  the  twentieth  century  during  his  own  lifetime.  As  it  was,  we  see 
that  intelligence,  greatly  increasing  in  the  speculative  and  usurious  classes, 


AN  AMERICAN  COMMONER.  127 

took  advantage  of  its  power  not  to  express  "enlightened  selfishness,"  but 
to  attempt  class  monopoly  of  the  results  of  the  disinterested  work  of  scien 
tists,  scholars,  and  the  non-acquisitive  classes  of  all  ages — results  which 
in  the  nineteenth  century  showed  themselves  in  an  unprecedented  increase 
in  productive  machinery,  in  an  unanticipated  revolution  in  distribution, 
effected  through  steam  and  electricity,  and  in  an  increase  of  the  intelligence 
represented  by  the  average  labor  product  of  the  world  such  as  no  other 
century  had  ever  realized  or  even  promised  as  far  as  its  promise  could  be 
understood. 

The  control  of  these  almost  infinite  advantages  of  civilization  was 
the  question  always  urged  against  Mr.  Bland  by  the  advocates  of  restric 
tion.  The  meaning  of  his  whole  life-work,  of  his  every  measure  and  his 
every  utterance,  is  that  this  control  belongs  to  the  people  alone — that  it  is 
a  part  of  their  sovereign  power,  and  that  no  assumption  of  their  own  sov 
ereignty  against  them  can  bind  them  to  submit.  It  was  in  this  that  he  was 
formidable  in  spite  of  his  gentleness  and  conservatism  and  for  this  in  him, 
the  times  called. 

The  positive  forces  of  determined  and  unsurrendering  resistance  to 
injustice  are  a  part  of  evolution,  through  increasing  freedom  of  co-opera 
tion.  All  forms  of  coerced  co-operation  (slavery  and  its  variants)  have 
been  necessarily  supported  by  law,  and  it  is  a  necessary  effect  of  the  work 
ings  of  the  principles  of  free  co-operation  for  which  Mr.  Bland  stood,  to 
oppose  the  perpetration  of  injustice  by  law. 

The  "Laissez  Faire"  for  which  he  stood  did  not  mean  letting  wrong 
alone  in  its  control  of  the  forces  of  government,  but  actively  opposing 
it;  wresting  the  law-making  and  law-executing  power  from  it,  and 
establishing  natural  conditions — conditions  under  which  the  positive  forces 
of  goodness,  of  fair  play,  of  helpfulness,  of  productiveness,  of  the  inher 
ent,  inappeasable  desire  of  the  human  race  to  express  in  concrete  forms 
of  use  and  beauty  its  innate  sense  of  fitness,  may  find  for  itself  the  largest 
possible  liberty  of  expression.  Under  conditions  of  liberty,  of  peace,  of 


I  28  AN  AMERICAN  COMMONER. 

freedom  from  the  restrictive  and  repressive  influences  of  fraud  and  vio 
lence,  the  sense  of  order  and  harmony  impressed  on  the  human  mind  by 
the  order  and  harmony  of  the  universe,  must  of  itself  result  in  raising  any 
sept  of  the  human  family  to  the  plane  of  intelligent  creativeness  which 
evolved  the  Parthenon  of  ancient  times  as  it  did  the  steam  engine  and  the 
electric  motor  of  modern. 

In  the  measure  in  which  men  become  free  and  just  with  a  government 
which  will  not  interfere  with  them  or  oppress  them — which  will  have  no 
other  function  than  that  of  enforcing  justice — in  that  measure  the  highest 
possible  productiveness,  the  freest  and  widest  possible  distribution  of  all 
products  of  intelligence  will  necessarily  result.  But  no  matter  what  the 
system,  no  matter  how  great  the  opportunity,  the  sense  of  justice  is  the 
vital  factor  of  productiveness  as  it  is  the  necessary  basis  of  free  co-opera 
tion.  No  constitution,  no  system  of  finance,  no  creed,  no  code  of  laws  or 
of  ethics  however  exalted,  can  be  efficient  beyond  the  limitations  of  the 
efficiency  of  the  sense  of  justice  governing  the  mass  of  co-operative  soci 
ety  at  any  given  time. 

Because  the  American  sense  of  justice  had  been  so  deeply  disturbed 
by  civil  war;  because,  in  subjugating  the  southern  states  to  restore  the 
Union  and  enfranchise  the  negroes,  both  north  and  south  had  been  de 
moralized  ;  because,  at  length  as  a  result  of  this  demoralization,  the  power 
of  government  was  used  by  the  class  which  Mr.  Lloyd  calls  the  "whirling 
dervishes  of  the  market" — because  of  this,  and  not  because  of  liberty, 
the  speculative  and  unproductive  classes  in  America  and  the  world  came 
into  a  fuller  control  in  the  last  half  of  the  nineteenth  century  than  they  had 
exercised  since  the  first  half  of  the  eighteenth. 

Had  the  currency  been  under  popular  control;  had  production  and 
distribution  been  unchecked ;  had  the  power  of  the  government  been  used 
to  protect  universal  rights  instead  of  special  interests,  the  development  of 
the  transmississippi  west — an  event  of  lasting  importance  to  the  human 
race — would  not  have  necessitated  a  fierce  political  struggle  to  prevent 


STATE,  WAR  AND  NAVY. 


THE  EXECUTIVE  MANSION,  WASHINGTON. 


PATENT  OFFICE. 


AN  AMERICAN  COMMONER.  129 

the  holders  of  its  mortgages  and  the  consumers  of  its  products  from  usurp 
ing  permanent  control  of  its  vast  creative  forces  for  their  own  purposes 
of  restriction  and  obstruction. 


CHAPTER  XIV. 

Speculative  Plutocracy  from  1873  to  1893. — The  "Whirling  Dervish"  as  a  Promoter 
of  Panics. — The  Gold  Corner  and  "Black  Friday"  Panic  Under  Grant  not  an 
Isolated  Incident. — Emotional  Insanity  as  a  Result  of  Moral  Disturbance  Due  to 
the  Speculative  Habit. — Beginning  of  Trusts  Under  Grant. — The  Standard  Oil 
Trust. — Conservatism  in  Administration  Under  Hayes  no  Check  to  the  Growth 
of  Plutocracy. — The  Attempt  to  Regulate  the  "Commune  of  Capital." — Use  of 
the  Law-Making  Power  by  "Practical"  Politicians  to  Blackmail  Law-Breaking 
Corporations. — The  Land  Grabbing  Spirit  in  its  Relations  to  Speculative 
Monopoly. 


HE  Whirling  Dervish  of  the  Market,"  to  whom  the  reader 
has  been  introduced  by  Mr.  Lloyd,  is  the  fact  of  most  mo 
mentous  importance  in  the  financial,  the  commercial,  the 
political  life  of  the  generation  which  followed  the    Civil 
war  in  America. 

In  the  great  panic  of  1893,  forced  by  the  speculative  managers  of 
national  banks  as  a  means  of  demonetizing  silver  and  perpetuating  the 
national  debt,  interest  on  call  loans  in  New  York  City  was  forced  up  to  two 
per  cent  a  day.  The  non-producers  who  are  at  one  time  the  agents  or 
at  another  the  victims  of  such  crimes  are  equally  insistent  that  they  alone 
are  fit  to  determine  the  financial  policies  of  the  country,  but  no  one  who  has 
seen  them  at  times  when  they  are  expressing  with  least  reserve  their  own 
deepest  reality,  will  be  in  doubt  of  the  meaning  or  the  accuracy  of  the 
phrase,  "whirling  dervishes"  as  it  applies  to  them. 

The  gold  corner  and  consequent  panic  under  Grant  which  was  an  in 
cident  of  the  policies  of  speculative  commercialism  was  not  an  isolated  in 
cident.  It  was  a  typical  result  of  a  panic-producing  system,  necessarily 
manifesting  the  fraudulent  intent  to  get  something  for  nothing — to  take 
without  giving — to  use  law,  government,  commercial  and  social  organiza 
tion,  the  church,  the  schools  and  colleges,  the  whole  machinery  of  co-opera 
tive  civilization  for  purposes  of  obstructing  production  and  distribution 

130 


AN  AMERICAN  COMMONER.  131 

so  as  to  force  the  payment  of  fraudulent  tolls  to  non-producers. 

At  times  when  this  spirit  manifests  itself  at  its  climaxes,  the  scene 
on  the  exchanges  of  St.  Louis,  Chicago  or  New  York  gives  an  immediate 
explanation  of  all  that  is  worst  and  most  demoralizing  in  our  politics  The 
most  dangerous  element  of  society  is  seen  without  restraint.  The  mob 
around  the  call  board  and  in  what  is  strikingly  called  "the  pit"  shows 
symptoms  of  more  violent  dementia  than  is  seen  in  the  insane  asylums. 
They  crowd  each  other  hither  and  thither,  pushing,  jostling,  scrambling 
as  only  the  fiercest  animals  scramble  when  food  is  thrown  them.  Their 
ejaculations,  cries  and  shrieks  show  the  most  intense  emotion,  uncon 
trolled  except  by  the  desire  to  take  advantage  of  those  with  whom,  indi 
vidually  and  collectively,  they  are  struggling.  The  confusion  is  anarchical 
and  expressive  of  the  latent  fierceness  of.  the  primitive  animal  nature  not 
less  than  is  that  of  the  average  riot  due  to  labor  strikes  where,  too  often  in 
the  same  spirit  and  by  what  too  closely  resembles  the  same  methods,  the 
attempt  is  being  made  to  control  the  markets. 

This  anarchy,  this  madness,  this  dire  disease  under  which  men  cease 
to  be  moral  beings,  is  economically  a  manifestation  of  the  same  desire  to 
control  others  by  controlling  prices  unnaturally  which  leads  the  same  men 
to  go  into  political  conventions  to  dictate  platforms  and  candidates,  or  to 
fill  the  lobbies  of  legislatures  and  of  Congress  with  their  agents,  bullying  or 
bribing  the  representatives  of  the  people  into  subserviency  to  their  poli 
cies — policies  illustrated  when  two  per  cent  a  day  is  charged  on  call  loans 
in  New  York  at  times  when  western  crops  are  being  "moved." 

This  is  not  denunciation.  It  is  not  inspired  by  partisanship  of  a  can 
didate,  a  political  organization  or  a  theory.  Back  of  its  expression  is  the 
conviction  based  on  close  and  familiar  observation  of  such  conditions,  that 
no  theory,  no  system,  no  party-action,  no  piling  up  of  legislative  enactment 
upon  enactment,  can  avail  anything  without  a  radical  change  from  the 
private  morals  and  the  public  spirit,  which  make  such  things  seem  toler 
able. 


132  AN  AMERICAN   COMMONER. 

To  take  a  piece  of  paper  worth  the  tenth  of  a  cent ;  to  spread  upon  it 
the  hundredth  part  of  a  cent's  worth  of  green  ink  and  then  to  market  it  as 
"a  security"  worth  a  hundred  or  a  thousand  dollars — this  method  of  cor 
poration  feudalism,  supported  by  enactment,  explains  such  related  incidents 
as  have  been  described,  and  leaves  little  to  the  imagination  when  the  causes 
of  business  demoralization  and  political  reaction  are  being  sought  for. 

Back  of  all  that  has  been  said  of  the  political  and  social  demoraliza 
tion  under  the  administrations  of  Grant:  back  of  all  that  Mr.  Bland  has 
said  in  describing  the  resistance  to  his  attempt  to  re-establish  a  sound  and 
natural  system  of  currency  and  trade,  these  conditions  of  desperate  specu 
lation  are  to  be  understood.  Mr.  Bland  never  compromised  with  them, 
and  he  never  misunderstood  them.  His  was  not  the  narrow  partisanship 
which  is  blind  to  the  faults  and  crimes  of  its  own  party.  In  1893,  when 
men  representing  these  conditions  and  the  spirit  which  produced  them 
had  put  in  control  of  the  cabinet  of  an  administration  elected  by  democratic 
votes,  representatives  of  the  great  fortunes  accumulated  by  such  methods, 
Mr.  Bland  declared  that  he  had  come  to  the  "parting  of  the  ways"  with 
them.  He  spoke  without  malice,  without  fear,  without  reservation.  No 
one  has  a  right  to  speak  for  him  or  of  him,  who  does  not  deal  with  such 
conditions  in  the  same  spirit. 

Under  Grant,  the  great  combinations  of  corporations  which  have 
since  been  called  "trusts,"  began  their  operations  in  the  United  States, 
steadily  increasing  in  number  and  audacity  under  the  administrations  of 
Hayes,  Garfield,  Arthur,  Cleveland,  Harrison  and  McKinley — all  of  which 
were  controlled  to  a  marked  extent  in  their  interests — the  Cleveland  ad 
ministration  of  1885  being  inaugurated  with  Mr.  Daniel  Manning,  a  na 
tional  banker  as  secretary  of  the  treasury,  and  Mr.  William  C.  Whitney  of 
New  York  as  secretary  of  the  navy — Mr.  Whitney  being  closely  identi 
fied  with  the  Standard  Oil  Company  and  later  on  with  other  great  com 
binations  of  speculative  capital  which  have  done  so  much  to  force  existing 
conditions. 


AN  AMERICAN  COMMONER.  133 

The  election  of  President  Hayes  was  a  result  of  the  reaction  from  the 
extreme  radicalism  of  plutocracy  under  Grant.  As  president,  Mr.  Hayes 
represented  the  idea  that  government  is  a  commercial  affair  rather  than 
an  agency  of  simple  justice,  but  he  did  not  believe  in  allowing  the  specu 
lative  and  non-productive  element  to  control  the  army  and  use  the  police 
and  war-making  power  as  they  had  done  under  Grant. 

The  method  of  his  election  calls  only  for  such  a  passing  reference  here 
as  will  attract  attention  to  Mr.  Eland's  protest  against  it,  and  to  the  de 
moralization  of  the  times.  It  was  undoubtedly  a  manifestation  of  plu 
tocracy,  but  Mr.  Hayes  personally  was  not  so  thoroughly  committed  to 
plutocratic  methods  as  was  Mr.  Tilden  whose  immense  fortune  had  been 
accumulated  not  by  productive  enterprise  but  by  his  ingenuity  as  an  attor 
ney  and  political  agent  for  the  same  corporate  combinations  in  America 
and  Europe  which,  after  forcing  the  panic  of  1893,  called  in  the  Roths 
childs  to  "underwrite"  the  American  treasury — rather  than  pay  out  five 
dollars  in  silver  and  five  dollars  in  gold  to  redeem  a  ten  dollar  greenback. 
The  issues  between  Mr.  Tilden  and  Mr.  Hayes  were  vital  only  as  they  con 
cerned  methods  of  government.  There  was  no  such  issue  of  principle  be 
tween  them  as  between  Bland  and  Grant  or  Bland  and  Cleveland. 

The  whirling  dervish  element  of  the  corporation  system  of  specula 
tive  and  unproductive  assimilation  did  not  control  the  Hayes  administra 
tion  as  it  had  done  under  Grant  and  it  controlled  still  less  under  Arthur, 
as  far  as  the  administrative  part  of  the  actual  government  was  concerned. 
But  from  Grant  to  the  third  year  of  McKinley's  administration,  there  has 
been  no  check  on  its  advance  towards  complete  control  of  money  and  trade 
under  restrictive  and  obstructive  laws  enacted  and  sustained  as  a  result  of 
"contributions  to  campaign  funds"  and  "assistance"  to  political  managers. 

Between  1860  and  i87o  there  was  an  increase  of  nearly  100  per  cent 
in  the  railroad  mileage  of  the  country,  due  largely  to  the  completion  of  the 
Union  and  Central  Pacific  roads.  In  1873,  a  special  committee  of  the 
United  States  Senate,  with  Messrs.  Sherman  and  Windom  among  its  mem- 


134  AN  AMERICAN  COMMONER. 

bers,  reported  that  the  gross  receipts  of  American  railroads  for  i872  had 
amounted  to  $473,241,058.  By  1892,  according  to  Poor's  estimates,  gross 
receipts  had  increased  to  $1,1 7 1,000,000,  and  during  the  same  period  the 
futility  of  the  attempt  at  government  regulation  had  been  demonstrated. 
In  the  case  of  railroads,  as  of  all  other  corporations  which  were  allowed 
to  exercise  for  their  private  benefit  the  delegated  sovereignty  of  the  peo 
ple,  it  had  been  shown,  as  it  was  asserted  by  the  Senate  committee  of  1873, 
that  "where  combination  is  possible,  competition  is  impossible."* 

The  railroads,  the  national  banks  and  the  protected  manufacturing 
corporations,  while  they  had  among  themselves  an  obvious  conflict  of  in 
terests,  constituted,  as  against  the  public,  a  "commune  of  capital,"  always 
ready  to  unite  for  the  purchase  of  salable  politicians  and  the  control  of 
elections.  The  federal  legislation  enacted  as  the  result  of  the  crusade  led 
by  Allen  G.  Thurman  and  Jeremiah  Black,  merely  increased  the  activity 
of  the  railroads  in  politics.  State  legislation  to  check  the  abuse  of  rail 
road,  manufacturing,  insurance  and  banking  franchises  had  the  same 
effect  to  an  extent  even  more  marked.  In  Missouri,  Illinois,  and  other 
leading  states  of  the  west  severe  inspection  laws  were  passed  to  restrain 
monopoly,  but  they  increased  the  corruption  of  politics  and  the  power  of 
the  combined  corporations  by  increasing  the  "contributions"  to  the  cam 
paign  funds  of  both  parties.  These  "contributions"  represent  at  all  times 
the  elements  both  of  blackmail  and  of  bribery.  Corporation  managers, 
whose  profits  depend  on  public  grants  threatened  always  with  public 
regulation  and  restriction,  would  be  more  than  human  if  they  did  not  seek 
to  control  the  government  as  a  means  of  avoiding  control  by  it.  But  where 
they  did  not  bribe  they  were  almost  inevitably  blackmailed  by  the  "prac 
tical  politicians"  of  both  parties — who,  when  in  charge  of  political  com 
mittees,  have  been  known  to  allow  themselves  and  their  friends  consider 
able  percentages  on  funds  thus  extorted  by  the  menace  of  the  law.  In 
other  instances,  the  fees  charged  for  the  inspection  of  such  monopolies  as 


*See  Report  Senate  Special  Committee  on  Transportation,  December  1873. 


AN  AMERICAN  COMMONER.  135 

that  in  petroleum  or  in  the  handling  of  grain  and  other  products  are  al 
lowed  to  go  to  an  inspector,  pledged  to  content  himself  with  a  moderate 
salary  from  them — turning  over  the  rest  to  the  "committee."  The  cor 
ruption  of  business  through  speculation  and  of  politics  through  bribery 
and  blackmail  increased  thus  pari  passu  with  the  growth  of  speculative 
monopoly  in  banking,  in  manufacturing,  in  railroad  building  and  manage 
ment,  and  in  the  control  of  western  lands.  The  element  of  fraud  in  the 
speculative  assimilation  of  lands  intended  for  actual  settlement  was  often 
very  striking  and  it  was  seldom  absent  for  any  considerable  period  while 
desirable  lands  were  to  be  had.  A  picturesque  illustration  is  afforded  by 
the  case  of  a  well  known  writer  and  politician,  originally  from  St.  Louis, 
who  planned  to  acquire  a  principality  near  Devil's  lake,  in  what  was  then 
the  territory  of  Dakota  by  building  a  "shack"  on  it  in  which  he  could  give 
his  friends  poker  parties  as  many  nights  of  the  year  as  were  required  to 
meet  the  demands  of  the  law  for  "actual  settlement."  Professor  An 
drews,  in  his  History  of  the  Last  Quarter  of  the  Century,  says  that  in 
Montana  a  representative  of  the  plutocratic  method  of  assimilating  land 
values,  "gave  a  series  of  balls  and  dinners  at  a  country  house,  inviting  a 
large  number  of  ladies  and  accompanying  each  invitation  with  a  promise 
of  a  $100  present.  At  each  festival,  in  the  midst  of  the  whirl,  each  guest 
signed  a  claim  to  a  homesteader's  rights  in  the  adjoining  lands.  When 
the  claims  were  proved  up,  each  lady  received  her  $100  and  the  authors 
of  the  scheme  got  land  enough  for  a  dukedom."* 

The  same  spirit,  with  changes  of  methods  suggested  by  circumstances, 
governed  the  operations  of  the  great  railroad  combinations  in  securing 
land  grants  and  special  privileges  of  right  of  way,  so  that  Mr.  Bland 
could  hardly  have  been  surprised  when  in  1898  those  who  were  attempting 
to  thrust  aside  the  coinage  issue  so  as  to  make  room  for  the  demonetiza 
tion  act  of  1900  should  have  argued  the  necessity  of  making  concession  to 
the  spirit  of  the  people  who,  as  they  asserted,  "always  wanted  to  grab 

*  History  of  the  Last  Quarter  Century  in  the  United  States,  by  E.  Benjamin  Andrews.    Scribners, 
1896. 


136  AN  AMERICAN  COMMONER. 

something" — who  by  such  reasoning,  were  therefore  to  be  encouraged  to 
withdraw  attention  from  the  control  of  the  currency  and  similar  reforms 
at  home  in  order  to  devote  it  to  the  acquisition  of  Cuba,  Puerto  Rico  and 
other  countries,  which  a  little  while  before,  the  United  States,  in  a  "War 
for  Humanity,"  had  pledged  itself  to  the  world  to  free  from  foreign  control. 
The  imperialistic  movement  under  McKinley,  as  under  Grant,  was 
thus  the  logical  and  the  only  logical  development  of  the  methods  and  the 
spirit  of  the  whirling  dervish  of  the  market — the  speculative  banker,  land- 
grabber,  stock-waterer,  grain-broker — the  parasite  of  whatever  name  or 
class,  who  seeks  to  take  toll  from  trade  without  either  producing  or  distrib 
uting  what  has  been  produced. 


CHAPTER  XV. 

The  Fundamental  Principle  of  Plutocracy  Manifested  in  Debt  Inflation  Accom 
panied  by  a  Demand  for  a  Contraction  of  the  Supply  of  Cash  Issued  by  Govern 
ment. — Mr.  Eland's  Consistency. — Debt  Inflation  Described  by  Henry  Clews. — 
Speculative  Banks  as  Holders  of  Inflated  Stocks  and  Bonds. — The  Character  of 
Fiske  as  Described  by  William  Walter  Phelps. — The  Imperialistic  Movement 
and  the  Demonetization  of  Silver  in  1900  a  Part  of  the  Logic  of  What  Fiske 
Represented. 

HE  fundamental  principle  of    the  plutocracy  Mr.  Bland  op 
posed  has  shown  itself  in  an  enormous  inflation  of  all  cor 
poration  debts,  accompanied  by  a  persistent  and  often  men 
acing  demand  for  the  contraction  of  the  cash  currency  which 
is  issued  by  the  mints  and  controlled  by  the  public  treasury. 

When  honesty  returns  to  public  life  and  sanity  to  business,  it  will 
seem  incredible  that  for  twenty-five  years  in  America,  such  a  principle 
should  have  steadily  gained  ground  in  public  and  private  business.  But 
there  is  now  no  need  to  argue  a  fact  so  completely  self-evident. 

At  a  time  when,  year  by  year,  the  dementia  of  speculation  has  been 
adding  one  billion  after  another  to  the  floating  debt  and  the  bonded  debt 
of  corporations  of  all  kinds ;  when  year  by  year  the  business  of  the  country 
has  been  forced  more  completely  to  the  basis  of  corporation  inflation  for 
all  values,  the  demand  has  been  pressed  for  a  minimum  amount  of  cash, 
though  an  increasing  supply  was  clearly  necessary  to  meet  this  debt,  to 
carry  on  a  business  constantly  increased  by  new  inventions  and  to  stave 
off  inevitable  "liquidation." 

Accompanying  this  madness,  has  been  the  not  less  insane  insistence  on 
a  currency  of  corporation  notes,  every  dollar  of  which  inflates  100  per  cent 
another  dollar  of  debt — the  corporation  note  itself  drawing  from  business 
"all  the  traffic  will  bear"  and  the  bond  on  which  it  is  issued  drawing  another 
interest  from  the  tax-payer. 

137 


138  AN  AMERICAN  COMMONER. 

In  opposing  the  watering  of  railroad  stocks,  the  increase  of  the  tariff, 
the  extension  of  such  monopolies  as  the  Standard  Oil  Company,  the  re 
newal  of  the  charters  of  national  banks,  the  payment  of  heavy  premiums 
on  bonds  to  London  and  Wall  street  bankers  and  finally  the  use  of  the 
military  force  of  the  government  for  the  establishment  of  "carpet-bag" 
control  in  Louisiana,  Arkansas  and  South  Carolina  as  in  Puerto  Rico, 
Cuba,  Hawaii  and  the  Philippines,  Mr.  Bland  was  supporting  identically 
the  same  principle  he  supported  in  advocating  the  free  and  unlimited  coin 
age  of  the  precious  metals.  He  was  attempting  to  free  the  government 
from  the  control  of  speculative  and  coercive  commercialists  and  to  leave 
trade  and  distribution  subject  to  the  great  laws  of  national  evolution. 

In  his  chapter  on  railroad  capitalization  Mr.  Clews  gives  his  readers 
a  lucid  explanation  of  the  methods  by  which  the  inflated  corporation 
paper  outstanding  against  cash  in  circulation  has  been  so  increased  as  to 
threaten  the  country  with  the  same  constant  return  of  panic  which  Bank 
of  England  control  imposes  on  English  trade. 

"Perhaps  I  may  best  succeed  in  making  myself  understood,"  he 
writes,*  "by  illustrating  the  way  in  which  our  railroads  are  usually  built. 
Under  the  laws  of  the  state  of  New  York,  which  are  a  fair  sample  of  the 
laws  of  other  states,  a  number  of  persons  form  a  company  under  the  gen 
eral  railroad  laws,  registering  at  Albany  the  proposed  route  of  the  road, 
the  amount  of  capital  stock  and  bonds  to  be  issued  and  a  few  other  par 
ticulars  required  in  the  papers  of  incorporation.  The  incorporators  then 
proceed  to  form  themselves  into  a  syndicate  or  company  for  the  purpose 
of  contracting  to  build  or  equip  the  road.  Here  comes  the  first  step  in 
the  system  of  'crooked'  financiering.  In  their  capacity  of  incorporators, 
the  same  men  make  a  contract  with  themselves  in  their  capacity  of  con 
structors.  Of  course  they  do  not  fail  to  make  a  bargain  to  suit  their  own 
interest.  They  would  be  more  than  human  if  they  did.  Usually  the  bar 
gain  is  that  the  construction  company  undertakes  to  build  the  road  for  80 
to  ico  per  cent  of  the  face  value  of  the  first-mortgage  bonds  with  an  equal 
amount  of  stock  and  sometimes  with  a  certain  amount  of  second  mortgages 
thrown  in,  virtually  without  consideration.  The  first  mortgages  are  sup- 

k<Twenty-Eight  Years  in  Wall  Street." 


AN  AMERICAN  COMMONER.  1 39 

posed  to  represent  the  real  cash  outlay  on  the  construction  and  equipment, 
but  as  a  matter  of  fact  the  true  cash  cost  of  the  work  done  and  materials 
furnished  ranges  from  60  to  80  per  cent  of  the  amount  of  first  liens  trans 
ferred  to  the  contractors.  The  construction  company  disposes  of  the  bonds 
partly  by  negotiating  their  sale  to  the  public  through  bankers  at  an  advance 
upon  the  valuation  at  which  they  received  them  and  partly  by  using  them 
in  payment  for  rails  and  equipment.  Beyond  the  profits  made  from  build 
ing  the  road  for  the  first-mortgage  bonds,  there  remains  in  the  hands  of 
the  constructors  the  entire  capital  stock  and  any  second-mortgage  bonds 
they  may  have  received — as  a  clear  bonus,  to  be  held  for  future  apprecia 
tion  and  to  be  kept  in  control  of  the  company  and  ultimately  to  be  so  sold  on 
a  market  deftly  manipulated  for  that  purpose.  This  is  the  way  in  which  a 
large  majority  of  our  railroads  have  been  and  others  still  are  constructed. 
It  will  thus  be  seen  that  the  actual  cash  cost  of  a  railroad  is  ordinarily  less 
than  fifty  per  cent  of  the  stock  and  bonds  issued  against  the  property  and 
that  its  first  mortgage  exceeds  the  amount  of  the  legitimate  actual  cost 
of  the  road." 

The  method  Mr.  Clews  is  here  describing  is  that  of  "business  con 
servatism."  In  suggesting  the  methods  of  such  great  financiers  as  Mr. 
Villard,  Mr.  Gould,  Mr.  Fiske,  Mr.  Ward  and  others  equally  well  known, 
Mr.  Clews  mentions  that  at  the  organization  of  the  Oregon  Navigation 
Company  its  assets  did  not  exceed  $3,500,000,  against  which  there* was  an 
original  issue  of  $6,000,000  in  stock  followed  by  an  increase  of  $3,000,000, 
a  second  increase  of  $6,000,000  and  a  bond  issue  of  $6,000,000 — or  over 
six  dollars  of  fraudulently  inflated  paper  outstanding  against  every  dollar 
of  cash.* 

When  note  is  taken  of  the  statement  by  Mr.  Clews  that  such  "securi 
ties"  as  this  are  disposed  of  "by  negotiating  their  sale  through  bankers" — 
when  we  remember  how  corporations  interlock,  how  money  thus  acquired 
is  invested  in  national  bank  stock  and  how  national  bank  directors  specu 
late  in  such  "investments,"  we  can  see  the  necessary  effect  of  this  reckless 
fraud  on  treasury  management. 


*For  similar  instances  of  speculative  corporation  methods  confer  the  evidence  of  the  investigation 
of  trusts  by  the  New  York  legislature  and  by  Congress. 


140  AN  AMERICAN  COMMONER. 

After  such  an  inflation  as  this,  the  men  guilty  of  it  invest  part  of  their 
fraudulent  profits  in  newspapers  to  denounce  as  "cranks"  men  like  Mr. 
Bland  who  resist  their  control  of  the  federal  treasury. 

Their  object  in  seeking  political  power  is  primarily  to  keep  the  supply 
of  available  cash  so  centralized  that  it  can  be  "cornered" — if  not  completely, 
at  least  to  such  an  extent  as  will  enable  them  to  influence  prices — especially 
the  speculative  prices  on  the  control  of  which  their  ability  to  plunder  each 
other  and  the  public  depends.  In  describing  one  of  them — a  typical  Amer 
ican  plutocrat,  the  organizer  of  the  first  great  gold  corner — Mr.  William 
Walter  Phelps,  who  was  minister  to  Austria  under  President  Garfield  and 
to  Germany  under  President  Harrison,  said  at  a  banquet  in  St.  Louis, 
March  24,  1874: 

"He  was  without  education,  culture  or  morality.  He  had  respect 
neither  for  God  nor  man.  He  had  no  faith  in  the  purity  of  woman  nor 
the  honor  of  his  fellows.  But  he  had  the  ambition  of  wealth  and  he  de 
termined  to  get  money  at  any  cost.  The  markets  of  a  country  demoralized 
by  a  long  war,  gave  the  opportunity  and  he  seized  it — unscrupulously  using 
all  the  agencies  which  the  experience  of  centuries  had  discovered.  He 
gained  a  fortune  by  robbery  and  went  unpunished.  With  it,  he  bought 
men  and  women  until  finally  he  sat  in  his  gilded  palace,  boasting — believing 
that  he  owned  the  legislature  that  made,  the  courts  that  interpreted  and  the 
governor  that  executed,  the  laws  of  his  state.  On  the  base  of  a  great  rail 
way  which  he  took  from  its  owners  by  fraud,  he  built  a  pyramid  of  splendid 
profligacy  so  high  that  the  world  saw  and  wondered.  The  luxury  of  Sar- 
danapalus,  the  vices  of  Nero,  were  his.  The  pedlar  drove  his  four-in- 
hand.  The  coward  marched  at  the  head  of  a  noble  regiment.  He  who 
knew  not  his  own  tongue  controlled  the  artists  of  a  continent.  In  his  own 
theatre  he  sought  rest,  and  watched  the  evolutions  of  dancing  girls  and 
listened  to  the  voices  of  singing  men  and  singing  women.  He  sent  his 
own  steamers  out  of  port  and  enticed  into  their  lavish  hospitality  many  of 
the  great  of  the  land.  He  even  hired  assassins  to  maim  his  enemies  and 
drove  in  the  sunlight  surrounded  by  a  bevy  of  his  mistresses.  The  man 
debauched  the  moral  sense  of  the  young,  disgraced  his  country,  and  died 
as  the  fool  dies,  shot  by  a  profligate  rival  for  a  wanton's  charms.  He  died 
and  left  nothing  except  the  contempt  of  the  good  and  the  execrations  of  the 


AN  AMERICAN  COMMONER.  141 

weak  whom  his  example  had  ruined." 

Nothing  needs  to  be  added  to  or  taken  from  this  masterly  delineation 
of  the  type  of  plutocracy  produced  by  the  demoralization  of  civil  war  and 
the  politics  which  followed  it.  The  foundations  of  the  fortune  laid  by  this 
man  and  his  partner  in  the  great  gold  conspiracy  of  1869,  grew  under  the 
cumulative  frauds  of  others  until  it  found  itself  represented  in  millions  of 
the  "securities"  of  railroads  in  Missouri  and  other  western  states,  whose 
managers,  interested  in  national  bank  control  of  the  currency  and  every 
other  form  of  monopoly,  were  always  alert  to  use  their  free  passes  and  other 
modes  of  bribery  to  control  Missouri  conventions  against  Mr.  Bland  and 
to  keep  the  secret  enemies  of  the  honesty  he  represented  in  control  of  dem 
ocratic  machinery.  The  imperialistic  movement  of  1898  and  the  conse 
quent  demonetization  of  silver  were  made  possible  by  such  methods. 


CHAPTER  XVI. 

Superiority  of  Plutocracy  to  Party  Illustrated  by  Mr.  Jay  Gould. — He  Demonstrates 
His  "Soundness"  by  Opening  His  Safe. — Influence  of  New  York  Safe  Deposit 
Vaults  in  Missouri  Politics. — The  Growth  of  Corporate  Inflation  Accompanied 
by  an  Increase  of  Irresponsibility  in  Politics. — Banks,  Railroads  and  Boards  of 
Trade  as  Necessary  Agencies  of  Civilization. — Production  and  Distribution  the 
Legitimate  Ends  of  all  Business  Activity. — Result  of  the  Speculative  Spirit 
in  Missouri  Politics. —  The  Attempt  of  Gambling  and  Railroad  Rings  to  get 
Something  for  Nothing.  Regulation  of  Railroad  Rates  Accompanied  by  a  Com 
plete  Absence  of  Regulation  for  the  Power  to  Issue  Stocks  and  Bonds  Against 
the  Credit  of  General  Business. — Rings  and  the  Ruthlessness  of  Speculative 
Politics. — Abuse  of  the  Courts  Against  the  People. 


N  NOVEMBER,   i872,  Mr.  Jay  Gould  was  arrested  on  crimi 
nal  charges  based  on  his  mismanagement  of  the  Erie  rail 
road.     The  suit  seems  to  have  been  intended,  not  for  the 
purpose  of  bringing  him  to  justice,  but  merely  to  force  him 
to  disgorge.     In  December  following  he  surrendered  securities  of  the  face 
value  of  over  $9,000,000  and  the  prosecution  against  him  was  allowed  to 
lapse. 

It  was  during  the  struggle  over  the  management  of  the  Erie  that  he 
testified  to  plutocratic  disregard  of  parties,  by  saying  that  he  was  a  demo 
crat  in  a  democratic  district,  a  republican  in  a  republican  district  and  al 
ways  an  Erie  man. 

The  spirit  of  plutocracy  has  been  suggested  by  Mr.  Phelps  in  the 
speech  from  which  an  extract  has  been  quoted.  His  analysis  of  the  character 
of  Fiske  illustrates  the  ethical  idea  of  "unsoundness."  The  financial  idea 
was  illustrated  in  March,  1882,  thirteen  years  after  the  gold  corner  in 
which  Mr.  Fiske  laid  the  foundations  of  his  own  reputation  and  assisted 
Mr.  Gould  in  his  first  steps  toward  financial  soundness.  The  report  hav 
ing  been  circulated  that  Mr.  Gould  was  sound  no  longer,  he  disposed  of 

it  at  once  by  inviting  a  select  committee  of  financiers  to  accompany  him 

142 


AN  AMERICAN  COMMONER.  143 

to  the  safe  deposit  vault  where  he  took  from  a  tin  box  and  showed  them 
$23,000,000  Western  Union,  $12,000,000  Missouri  Pacific,  $6,000,000  Man 
hattan  Elevated,  $2,000,000  Wabash  Common  and  $10,000,000  bonds  of 
Metropolitan,  New  York  Elevated  and  Wabash  Preferred.  It  is  said  that 
"he  offered  to  show  $30,000,000  additional  railway  stocks  but  his  visitors 
had  seen  enough."* 

The  connection  between  this  incident  and  Mr.  Eland's  work  in  Mis 
souri  appears  when  we  recall  the  fact  that  the  fundamental  question  in 
Missouri  during  the  entire  time  of  his  public  service  was  the  question  of 
the  extent  to  which  the  politics  of  this  hoard  and  other  hoards  like  it,  held 
in  safe  deposit  vaults  in  New  York  and  London  should  dominate  Missouri, 
and  through  Missouri,  the  Union.  In  January,  1882,  Messrs.  Gould  and 
Huntington  purchased  a  controlling  interest  in  the  San  Francisco  railroad 
which  intersects  the  district  Mr.  Bland  represented.  The  Missouri  Pacific, 
the  Iron  Mountain,  the  Wabash  and  the  San  Francisco  gave  the  Gould 
interest  a  power  which,  when  united  with  that  of  the  other  railroads  center 
ing  in  St.  Louis  and  co-operating  with  the  national  banks  of  St.  Louis, 
Kansas  City  and  St.  Joseph,  would  have  been  omnipotent  but  for  the  steady 
resistance  of  those  who  had  Mr.  Bland  to  rely  on  in  emergencies.  Often 
the  fiercest  fighting,  sometimes  in  actual  earnest,  took  place  between  repre 
sentatives  of  opposing  corporations  and  syndicates,  which,  after  shaping 
the  issues  to  suit  themselves,  allowed  their  representatives  on  one  side 
and  the  other,  to  struggle  with  each  other — for  the  sake  of  exercise  or  of 
salaries  to  be  paid  them  as  officeholders  by  the  people. 

The  pretense  of  antagonism  between  agents  of  the  same  corporations, 
sometimes  admired  as  the  mark  of  deep  and  subtle  statesmanship,  is  char 
acteristic  of  the  spirit  of  those  who  used  their  by  no  means  inconsiderable 
ingenuity  in  the  effort  to  keep  Mr.  Bland  in  obscurity  on  the  ground  that 
he  was  "objectionable  to  the  business  interests" — the  "business  interests" 
meant,  being  the  national  banks  and  the  holders  of  such  hoards  as  that  ex- 

*Clews'  "Twenty-Eight  Years  in  Wall  Street,"  page  518. 


144  AN  AMERICAN  COMMONER. 

hibited  by  Mr.  Gould. 

While  the  exposure  of  individual  false-pretenses  would  be  an  un 
grateful  task  and  a  useless  one  in  any  event,  it  is  a  necessary  part  of  the 
truth  of  history  to  show  that  when  Mr.  Bland  did  come  to  the  front  in 
Missouri  politics  and  the  politics  of  the  world,  it  was  a  result  of  the  work 
ing  of  the  evolutionary  forces  of  the  people,  and  in  opposition  to  the  wishes 
and  interests  of  the  mere  parasitic  politicians  and  professional  office 
holders  of  all  parties. 

As  a  result  of  the  evolutionary  impulses  of  growth  in  the  people,  three 
decades  of  Missouri  history  made  during  Mr.  Eland's  connection  with  the 
public  affairs  of  the  state  represented  steady  progress  industrially  and 
socially.  If  political  conditions  in  1900  seem  to  represent  the  extreme  of 
demoralization,  it  is  hard  to  say  that  they  are  worse  than  they  were  in  i87o. 
It  is  a  saying  of  the  late  S.  S.  Cox  that  it  is  not  always  the  best  men  who 
are  best  in  their  relations  to  public  affairs,  and  while  it  is  not  to  be  con 
ceded  that  moral  irresponsibility  ih  politics  is  to  be  tolerated  or  compro 
mised  with,  there  is  no  room  either  for  surprise  or  despair  when  it  is  found 
that  a  very  considerable  number  of  those  who  become  parasites  on  the  pub 
lic  as  officeholders  or  professional  politicians,  become  morally  irresponsible 
under  any  system  in  which  the  ultima  ratio  of  government  is  in  fact 
coercive  and  the  immediate  object  of  "practical  politics,"  is  the  enactment 
of  laws  which  will  put  this  power  of  coercion  in  the  hands  of  the  most 
astute,  aggressive  and  acquisitive.  In  Missouri,  as  elsewhere  in  the  United 
States,  in  the  thirty  years  since  i87o,  the  increase  in  plutocracy  as  a  spirit 
in  government  has  bred  an  increase  of  irresponsibility  in  practical  poli 
tics.  Many  of  the  men,  however,  who  have  been  demoralized  until  they 
are  irresponsible  as  individuals,  are  by  no  means  malevolent,  and  under 
conditions  which  will  make  the  moral  forces  of  the  people  the  governing 
forces  in  politics,  they  can  be  restored  to  a  very  considerable  measure  of 
constructive  usefulness. 

Hence  it  is  not  to  be  assumed  that  logical  conclusions  from  the  study 


JOHN  A.  HOCKADAY 


S.  W.  T.  LANHAM. 


JOSEPH:D.  SAVERS. 


CHARLES  A.  TOWNE. 


AN  AMERICAN  COMMONER.  145 

of  American  politics,  local  and  general,  are  necessarily  pessimistic.  On 
the  contrary,  they  warrant  the  belief  that  progress  will  be  continuous  and 
that  all  attempts  to  interrupt  it  or  to  turn  it  back  will  fail. 

The  railroads,  the  banks,  the  manufacturing  enterprises,  all  the  varied 
phenomena  of  industrial  co-operation  under  free  institutions,  are  them 
selves  collectively  and  severally,  not  merely  individual  enterprises  but  mani 
festations  of  irresistible  creative  force  derived  from  the  people  and  increas 
ing  with  the  development  of  the  popular  intellectual  and  moral  sense.  The 
very  opposition  to  their  mismanagement  which  sometimes  is  called  "enmity 
to  progress"  is  an  essential  part  of  the  force  which  called  them  into  exist 
ence.  As  far  as  a  railroad  is  an  actual  agency  of  distribution,  helping  to 
exchange  products  from  producer  to  consumer,  it  is  a  most  beneficent  and 
necessary  part  of  that  great  scheme  of  liberty  and  progress  into  which 
Mr.  Eland's  life-work  has  already  been  absorbed.  As  far  as  a  bank  is 
not  a  mere  device  for  collecting  non-productive  usury  from  the  products 
of  the  people  or  for  inflating  debt  with  its  notes  issued  against  the  volume 
of  trade ;  as  far  as  it  is  actually  helping  to  distribute  food  and  clothing — 
the  necessaries  and  comforts  of  life  to  the  hungry  and  the  naked,  its  work 
is  beneficent  and  noble.  As  far  as  the  speculator  in  grain  or  in  railroad 
stocks,  or  in  the  "securities"  of  the  trusts,  is  helping  the  actual  workers  of 
the  world  to  help  each  other  by  exchanging  their  products  and  realizing 
as  wealth  wrhat  would  otherwise  be  mere  wasted  labor,  then  he  too  is  a 
highly  useful  member  of  society  and  every  howl  he  utters,  every  shriek, 
every  contortion  of  his  body  in  the  "panics"  he  brings  on  by  his  own  in 
sanity  assisted  by  that  of  others  like  him,  helps  the  work  of  progress  and 
gives  him  a  claim  to  survival  where  otherwise  he  would  have  none. 

In  the  unfair  use  of  privileges  enjoyed  by  railroad  and  banking  cor 
porations  and  in  the  speculative  mania  fostered  by  boards  of  trade  and 
similar  institutions  for  the  promotion  of  gaming  as  an  incident  of  business, 
we  can  find  a  sufficient  cause  of  the  worst  demoralization  of  Missouri 

politics  and  of  national  politics  during  the  last  quarter  of  the  nineteenth 
10 


146  AN  AMERICAN  COMMONER. 

century,  but  when  we  go  to  the  roots  of  every  evil  in  politics,  as  of  every 
good  thing  in  society,  in  business,  and  in  government,  we  find  it  in  the 
people  themselves.  The  fierceness  of  civil  war  in  America  in  general  and 
in  Missouri  in  particular,  impeded  the  operation  of  popular  constructive 
intelligence.  It  can  not  be  repeated  too  often  that  in  the  measure  in  which 
hate  and  passion  exist  as  governing  forces  in  the  popular  mind,  fraud  upon 
the  people  is  made  possible  for  those  who  through  self-interest  have 
learned  to  control  passion,  whose  acquisitiveness  does  not  necessarily  in 
volve  hate,  whose  intellectual  activity  in  gaining  for  themselves  what  be 
longs  to  others  does  not  result  in  malevolence — except  where  they  are 
strenuously  and  successfully  resisted. 

Except  to  make  it  clear  that  the  people,  as  the  source  of  social  and  co 
operative  energy  are  themselves  primarily  and  finally  responsible  for  all  the 
corruptions  and  abuses  of  which  they  are  made  the  victims,  it  would  be 
worse  than  useless  to  go  over  again  the  old  story  of  the  obstruction  and 
perversion  of  the  forces  of  progress.  If,  however,  the  people  can  be  made 
to  realize  that  their  whole  social  and  industrial  order  is  at  every  stage  of 
the  world  completely  representative  of  their  own  moral  and  intellectual 
condition,  the  work  of  denouncing  perversion  and  obstruction  will  be  con 
structive  where  otherwise  it  would  stand  for  negation. 

Whether  in  London,  in  Washington  or  in  Jefferson  City,  we  can  not 
examine  into  the  practical  workings  of  legislation  and  of  executive  gov 
ernment  without  finding  that  the  radical  question  under  existing  economic 
and  industrial  conditions  is  the  control  of  the  bonds  representing  the  debts 
of  the  states,  of  municipalities  and  of  corporations  operating  under  the  dele 
gated  sovereignty  of  states  and  municipalities.  The  "money  question"  is 
an  incident  of  this,  as  the  whole  struggle  over  the  currency  pivots  on  the 
question  of  whether  or  not  corporations  shall  be  allowed  to  circulate  paper 
evidence  of  their  own  indebtedness  to  take  the  place  of  cash  issued  by  the 
people.  In  an  article  in  the  London  Contemporary  Review  (1896)  on  Mr. 
Bland  and  other  "American  Currency  Cranks,"  Mr.  J.  R.  Lawton  made  a 


AN  AMERICAN   COMMONER.  H7 

statement  which  illustrates  the  reality  of  the  objections  alleged  against  bi 
metallism  as  a  part  of  the  Missouri  demand  for  popular  government  in 
America.  "Bank  money/'  he  said,  "is  to  be  the  money  of  the  future.  It 
is  already  doing  nine-tenths  of  the  work  of  civilization.  Metallic  money 
has  become  a  mere  appendage  to  it  and  the  relations  of  the  two  demand 
re-adjustment." 

Remembering  that  the  question  under  a  system  of  industry  based  on 
feudal  grants  to  corporations;  is  necessarily  that  of  accepting  or  resisting 
their  control  of  the  taxing,  money-issuing  and  debt-making  power  of  the 
people,  we  will  see  that  no  change  of  subject  is  involved  in  shifting  from 
London  in  1896  to  Jefferson  City  thirty  years  earlier,  when  the  question 
was  one  of  controlling  the  future  of  the  state  in  the  interest  of  the  finan 
ciers  who  had  acquired  possession  of  its  bonds  and  of  the  bonds  issued  in 
the  name  of  its  counties  and  municipalities. 

The  value  of  the  property  of  the  state,  including  slaves,  was  assessed 
for  taxation  at  $317,928,000  in  1860.  In  1865,  it  was  placed  at  $200,000,- 
ooo,  but  in  1868  it  was  placed  at  $468,000,000,  against  which  a  bonded 
debt  of  $18,654,000,  issued  under  state  authority,  was  outstanding  exclu 
sive  of  county  and  municipal  debts.  More  than  $13,000,000  of  this  state 
debt  represented  bonds  issued  as  subsidies  to  railroads,  and  the  county 
debts  had  been  imposed  largely  for  the  same  purpose.  Where  not  actu 
ally  fraudulent  in  a  legal  sense,  and  therefore  void,  as  they  often  were, 
these  bonds  stood  for  the  principle  of  communism  in  its  worst  form,  and 
every  dollar  collected  on  them  in  interest  or  principal,  meant  the  hand  of 
the  state  applied  in  confiscation  to  the  property  of  the  citizen.  Except 
under  the  communistic  principle,  they  can  not  be  justified  or  excused.  As 
they  passed  into  the  hands  of  bankers,  they  became  a  part  of  the  same  in 
terest  represented  by  the  demand  for  "bank  money"  instead  of  coin, 
made  so  insistently  from  London  and  New  York.  In  the  year  1868,  in 
which  the  struggle  over  them  opened  in  Missouri,  a  statue  was  erected  to 
Thomas  H.  Benton  in  St.  Louis.  It  was  the  "first  monument  ever  erected 


148  AN  AMERICAN  COMMONER. 

to  a  public  man  in  the  state  of  Missouri,"  and  on  May  27,  the  address 
dedicating  it  was  made  by  Frank  P.  Blair,  who  succeeded  Benton  in  the 
Senate  as  the  representative  of  the  Missouri  tradition  of  individual  lib 
erty  against  communism  of  the  corporations  on  the  one  hand  and  the  mob 
on  the  other.  Blair  was  elected  to  the  United  States  Senate  in  i87i.  In 
i872  the  legislature  passed  a  resolution  that  the  state  had  a  right  to  redeem 
its  debt  in  legal  tender  notes  and  the  supreme  court  decided  that  the  state 
might  prescribe  the  methods  of  debt  payment.  The  issues  were  intensified 
as  popular  opposition  to  corporation  control  of  the  state  began  to  assert 
itself.  General  John  B.  Henderson,  the  candidate  for  governor  defeated 
when  Woodson  was  elected  in  i872,  was  afterwards  publicly  identified 
with  the  long  struggle  made  by  the  holders  of  county  bonds  for  the  con 
trol  of  the  courts — especially  of  the  county  courts  without  which  they  could 
not  reach  the  property  they  proposed  to  sell.  Rather  than  levy  on  the  farms 
of  those  whose  rights  had  been  overridden;  whose  fundamental  principle 
of  government  had  been  supplanted  by  that  of  the  communism  of  granting 
unearned  wealth  to  corporations,  county  judges  spent  months  hiding  in 
the  woods  to  escape  the  processes  of  judges  put  on  the  bench  of  the  higher 
courts  by  plutocratic  influence.  Others,  when  arrested  for  contempt  of 
such  wrongful  court  orders,  spent  their  whole  terms  in  jail.  Such  was 
the  persistence  of  the  holders  of  these  bonds,  such  was  the  influence  they 
were  able  to  exercise,  that  this  struggle  went  on  for  twenty-five  years ;  and 
even  now  men  are  found  on  the  bench  who  will  declare  as  law  the  commun 
istic  claim  of  the  equal  right  of  all  to  the  legislative  use  of  the  private  prop 
erty  of  each  on  behalf  of  any  enterprise  which  can  make  a  plausible  pre 
tense  of  being  in  the  public  interest.  This  dishonesty  goes  deep.  It  un 
derlies  the  worst  corruptions  in  the  public  and  business  life  of  the  state 
and  of  the  country. 

In  1875,  when  Senator  Sherman  was  pushing  the  bill  "for  the  resump 
tion  of  specie  payments,"  which  was  really  in  its  intention  a  bill  for  the 
perpetuation  of  national  "bank  money"  to  take  the  place  both  of  treasury 


AN  AMERICAN  COMMONER.  149 

notes  and  specie,  the  Missouri  legislature  passed  a  "funding  bill"  which 
satisfied  the  holders  of  the  state's  bonds  that  they  would  not  have  their 
interest  stopped  by  a  too  prompt  payment  of  the  principal.  Unable  to 
inflate  the  principal  by  new  issues  through  the  state  legislature,  they  con 
tinued  inflation  through  the  counties  and  municipalities,  but  more  espec 
ially  through  increase  of  capital  recorded  in  the  office  of  the  secretary  of 
state.  The  amount  of  paper  issued  by  Mr.  Gould  alone  against  the  credit 
of  general  business  and  the  industry  of  the  country  is  enormous.  In 
1875,  an  act  was  passed  providing  for  the  appointment  of  three  railroad 
commissioners,  empowered  to  regulate  passenger  and  freight  rates.  While 
they  were  doing  it,  the  work  of  inflation  went  on  with  increasing  activity. 
While  the  commissioners  saved,  or  professed  to  save,  a  thousand  dollars 
on  rates,  a  million  in  stock-increases  or  in  new  bonds  could  be  issued 
against  the  property  of  the  commonwealth  and  the  industry  of  society, 
under  the  authority  of  the  state  itself,  unchecked  and  almost  unnoticed. 

The  claim  that  this  enormous  inflation  of  outstanding  debt  was  based 
on  private  property  is  too  obviously  untenable  to  be  discussed  at  all  among 
those  who  are  capable  of  even  rudimentary  thought.  Every  dollar  of  this 
debt,  in  Missouri  and  elsewhere,  issued  by  warrant  of  the  state  and  by 
authority  of  statute,  represents  the  delegated  sovereignty  of  the  state 
and  is  in  its  economy  as  much  a  part  of  the  public  debt  as  the  bonds 
of  the  state  or  of  the  United  States.  The  interest  on  every  dollar  of  it 
must  be  paid  out  of  the  product  of  public  co-operative  industry  and  every 
dollar  of  its  principal  when  paid  at  all  must  be  paid  by  levies  of  one  kind  or 
another  on  the  private  property  of  citizens  whose  sovereignty  in  their  col 
lective  capacity  as  a  state  was  abused  in  its  issuance. 

The  result  of  this  continually  increasing  inflation  was  a  continual  in 
crease  in  the  energy  of  the  attempt  to  "take  all  the  traffic  will  bear."  In 
1880,  in  order  to  evade  all  issues  against  plutocracy,  a  handsome  and 
distinguished  West  Pointer,  a  chivalric  and  honest  gentleman  who  de 
clared  the  tariff  a  "local  issue,"  was  imposed  on  the  democratic  party  as 


150  AN  AMERICAN  COMMONER. 

its  presidential  candidate.  During  the  same  period,  and  as  evidence  of 
the  same  conditions,  an  open  headquarters  was  maintained  at  Jefferson 
City  for  the  control  by  purchase  or  otherwise,  of  members  of  the  legisla 
ture.  It  offered  free  passes,  free  cigars  and  free  drinks  to  all  comers  who 
could  show  a  pretense  of  official  or  personal  influence  and  it  promoted  the 
"poker  parties"  at  which  it  was  said  that  the  purchasable  were  sometimes 
allowed  to  win  the  price  of  their  votes.  From  1880  to  1884,  the  condition 
of  municipal  politics  in  Missouri  showed  the  public  demoralization  which 
manifested  itself  at  Washington  and  in  the  larger  cities  of  the  east  and 
south.  St.  Louis  had  a  gambling  ring  as  compactly  organized  as  the 
lottery  ring  of  New  Orleans,  the  Tweed  ring  of  New  York  or  the  Shepherd 
ring  of  Washington.  The  whiskey  ring  of  the  Grant  administration,  with 
headquarters  in  Missouri,  had  suggested  methods  which  others  equally 
audacious  and  unscrupulous  were  quick  to  imitate.  The  keeper  of  a  St. 
Louis  keno  room,  striving  to  monopolize  the  privileges  of  his  business  as 
so  many  other  financiers  were  doing  at  the  time,  secured  special  privileges 
which  enabled  him  to  dictate  the  appointment  of  police  commissioners  and 
other  officials — the  resignations  of  some  of  whom  he  kept  signed  in  his 
safe  so  that  the  dates  could  be  filled  in  whenever  their  official  conduct  dis 
pleased  him.  The  chairman  of  the  democratic  state  central  committee — 
a  railroad  employee — had  been  imposed  on  the  honest  democrats  of  the  state 
by  corporation  influence  and  the  entire  machinery  of  the  party  was  used  to 
support  the  ring.  It  controlled  the  St.  Louis  courts  and  the  machinery 
of  the  city  government,  but  at  its  worst  it  was  disorganized  by  an  attack 
opened  on  it  by  men  who  opposed  it  because  of  the  same  impulses  which 
made  them  supporters  of  Mr.  Eland's  policies. 

What  American  political  conditions  have  meant  during  the  last  quarter 
of  the  nineteenth  century  is  illustrated  by  the  fact — a  very  commonplace 
one — that  when  all  other  means  of  controlling  those  who  were  found  to 
be  the  real  promoters  of  this  reform  failed,  they  were  notified  in  several 
instances  that  they  would  be  "shot  on  sight."  The  execution  of  the  threat 


AN  AMERICAN  COMMONER.  151 

may  or  may  not  have  been  intended.  "I  bluffed  him  with  language  and 
language  is  cheap/'  said  a  witness  before  the  Trust  investigating  com 
mittee  of  Congress*  The  idea  that  "language"  is  a  cheap  means  of  con 
trolling  those  who  protest  against  their  methods  is  a  favorite  one  with 
those  who  wish  to  control  the  law-making  power  for  their  own  benefit. 
The  threats  which  are  made  will  not  be  carried  out  in  many  cases  even 
where  they  fail  to  intimidate,  but  that  the  men  who  make  them  are  often 
desperadoes,  there  can  be  no  doubt.  That  they  often  prompt  others  to 
commit  crimes  which  would  promote  their  own  interest  was  illustrated 
by  the  blowing  up  of  a  distillery  which  antagonized  the  whiskey  trust,  by 
the  wrecking  of  a  refinery  which  held  out  against  the  Standard  Oil  trust 
and  by  the  ruthless  use  of  violence  to  suppress  objections  to  the  sugar 
trust's  plans  for  controlling  the  cane  sugar  supply  in  Puerto  Rico,  Cuba, 
Hawaii  and  the  Philippines. 

In  studying  the  history  of  political  morals,  the  sequence  of  cause  and 
effect  from  the  corruptions  of  ward  politics  to  national  and  international 
crimes  is  unmistakable.  It  was  said  at  one  of  the  great  crises  of  Mr. 
Eland's  work,  when  a  St.  Louis  convention  was  being  packed  against  him 
nearly  twenty  years  after  the  exposure  of  the  gambling  ring  of  1876-84, 
that  if  the  roll  of  its  surviving  members  had  been  called,  they  would  have 
been  found  almost  without  exception  on  the  floor,  organizing  the  conven 
tion  to  promote  local  frauds  which  in  their  turn,  were  intended  to  promote 
national  and  international  injustice  so  grave  as  to  be  impossible  of  perpet 
uation  except  through  violence  or  the  always  imminent  threat  of  it. 


•"See  testimony  quoted  in  Lloyd's  "Wealth  Against  Commonwealth." 


CHAPTER  XVII. 

The  Democratic  Party  in  Missouri  as  Bland  Represented  it.— The  Idea  Which  Has 
Given  it  Coherence  and  Efficiency.— The  Only  Motive  Which  Can  Justify  Men 
of  Higher  Intelligence  in  Taking  Part  in  Politics. — Bland  and  the  Courage  of 
Leadership.— Frank  P.  Blair  and  His  Pistols.— Eland's  Steadfast  Patience.— The 
Supreme  Test  of  Fitness  for  Success.— Bland  as  the  Type  of  the  Highest  Possi 
bilities  of  Missouri  Character.— The  Military  Idea  in  Missouri  Politics.— Growth 
of  Plutocratic  Combinations. — Bland  and  the  Transmississippi  West  Overthrow 
Malthusianism. — The  Struggle  for  the  Largest  Possible  Production  and  the 
Freest  Possible  Distribution. — Attempts  of  the  Speculative  Element  to  Control 
in  Missouri. — Marmaduke's  Epoch-making  Stand  for  Principle. 


HE  democratic  party  in  Missouri  has  been  held  together  by 
an  intense  if  undefined  conviction  that  freedom  to  grow  is 
the  only  possible  solution  of  every  possible  problem. 

This  idea,  which  Mr.  Bland  was  honest  enough  and 
strong  enough  to  represent,  has  saved  the  state  and  the  country  from  vio 
lent  revolution,  which  would  have  been  otherwise  the  necessary  conse 
quence  of  such  immorality  as  has  been  touched  on  in  the  last  chapter. 

Devotion  to  an  ideal  higher  than  the  possibilities  of  the  present,  faith 
in  goodness  inherent  in  human  nature  and  above  it  as  the  ultimate  solu 
tion  of  all  problems,  readiness  when  convinced  of  duty  to  make  any  sacri 
fice  for  it — these  are  characteristics  of  the  best  type  of  Americanism  in 
Missouri,  and  Mr.  Bland  represented  them  in  Missouri  politics  in  a  way 
that  gave  them  high  efficiency. 

The  hope  of  providing  a  more  nearly  adequate  means  of  expression 
for  the  goodness  in  human  nature  is  the  only  motive  which  can  justify  a 
man  of  common  sense  and  of  right  impulses  in  having  anything  to  do 
with  the  struggles  of  politics  in  a  generation  as  fierce  as  that  which  fought 
the  Civil  war  in  America. 

At  the  very  outset  of  his  career  in  Missouri  politics,  Mr.  Eland's  life 

was  threatened,  and  when  he  spoke  in  spite  of  the  threat,  he  risked  his  life 

152 


AN  AMERICAN  COMMONER.  1 53 

to  denounce  what  he  looked  upon  as  intolerable  wrong.  When,  during 
the  same  period,  Frank  P.  Blair*  spoke  with  a  pistol  displayed  on  the 
stand  in  front  of  him,  his  life  was  no  doubt  in  as  much  actual  danger  as  it 
had  ever  been  in  battle.  Though  conditions  slowly  improved,  the  rever 
sion  due  to  the  spirit  excited  by  the  Spanish  war  was  marked,  and  it  must 
be  taken  fully  into  account  in  explaining  the  demoralization  of  politics  in 
a  state  where  the  great  majority  of  the  people  assimilate  distinctly  the 
type  of  simplicity,  honesty,  benevolence  and  steadfastness  which  Mr. 
Bland  represented. 

No  matter  how  often  it  is  repeated  by  rote  that  good  citizenship 
requires  the  extremes  of  violent  contention  for  this  measure  or  that,  for 
this  leader  or  that,  no  one  who  has  made  the  actual  experiment  can  look 
back  upon  his  experience  in  meeting  the  evil  in  politics  upon  its  own 
ground,  without  seeing  that  the  pistol,  which  Blair  displayed  or  that  with 
which  he  himself  may  have  worn  out  his  own  pockets  while  waiting  the 
overt  act  of  those  who  coerce  timid  champions  of  right  with  threats,  is 
itself,  representative  of  the  worst  forces  of  opposition  to  the  evolution  of 
justice  in  Being  and  liberty  in  Growing. 

The  highest  citizenship — the  only  good  citizenship — is  that  of  long- 
suffering  and  unsurrendering  devotion  to  principle — such  citizenship  as 
Mr.  Bland  represented  when  with  his  life-work  done,  and  his  last,  long- 
husbanded  vital  forces  exhausted  in  the  struggle  of  1898,  he  died  slowly 
and  patiently,  fully  realizing  that  as  a  result  of  the  defection  made  possi 
ble  by  the  spirit  of  violence  excited  during  the  Spanish  war,  silver  would  be 
demonetized,  the  national  banks  given  complete  control  of  the  currency, 
the  influence  of  England  made  predominant  in  American  finances  for  the 
time  being  and  the  hold  of  plutocracy  on  the  machinery  of  society  strength 
ened  in  America  and  the  world. 

To  be  able  to  work  calmly  and  persistently  through  life  for  an  object, 
not  stopping  for  abuse  or  changing  for  opposition,  and  then  at  the  last  to 


*See  Eulogy  of  Blair  by  Hon.  Champ  Clark,  in  the  Congressional  Record  for  1899. 


154  AN  AMERICAN  COMMONER. 

die  defeated,  with  all  the  patience  of  the  long  struggle — not  exhausted  by 
defeat  but  increased  by  it — this  is  the  supreme  test  of  fitness  for  final  suc 
cess  and  this  is  the  sure  means  of  achieving  it  where  all  others  fail. 

In  this  Mr.  Bland  was  as  much  a  type  of  the  highest  possibilities  of 
Missouri  character  as  Washington  was  of  the  highest  type  of  the  Virginia 
character  of  his  day.  Nothing  is  hopeless  in  a  world  where  men  can  live 
so  and  die  so. 

In  antithesis  to  the  possibilities  of  achievement  for  the  future  thus  man 
ifested,  we  have  the  actual  conditions  of  the  past  and  of  the  present,  which 
must  be  studied  patiently  and  candidly  if  we  are  not  to  go  on  forever  mak 
ing  folly  in  one  generation  a  precedent  for  crime  in  the  next. 

The  struggle  over  the  organization  of  Kansas  and  Nebraska  as  states, 
evoked  in  Missouri  and  Kansas  in  violent  acts  what  had  become  the  spirit 
of  the  national  life — a  spirit  of  discord  and  destructiveness  which  in  the 
first  decade  after  the  Civil  war  showed  itself  in  violence  and  fraud  in  pol 
itics. 

Missouri,  which  became  a  pivotal  state  in '1820,  demonstrated  that  it 
was  still  so  in  1861  when,  under  Blair's  leadership,  it  kept  the  control  of 
the  Mississippi  against  the  Confederacy,  and  finally  in  the  liberal  republican 
movement  and  the  later  movement  forced  by  Mr.  Bland,  showed  that  the 
same  causes  which  gave  it  power  at  the  beginning  were  still  at  work. 

These  causes  are  clearly  apparent  in  the  three  decades  of  state  politics 
between  i87o  and  1900,  and  chief  among  them  is  the  keenness  of  con 
tention  between  representatives  of  radically  conflicting  ideas  who  lack  on 
both  sides  the  forces  necessary  to  win  decisive  victory. 

The  necessity  for  sharp  and  continuous  struggle  is  easily  recognizable 
by  those  who  are  subjected  to  such  conditions,  and  as  a  part  of  the  same 
necessity  they  see  that  frequent  compromises  are  unavoidable.  In  the 
"Young  Men's  Movement"  in  Missouri,  between  1880  and  1890,  it  was  said 
vindictively  that  for  nearly  twenty  years,  the  "Civil  War  Colonels"  on  both 
sides  had  been  adjusting  their  differences  by  falling  on  each  other's  neck 


AN  AMERICAN  COMMONER.  1 55 

in  public  "reconciliation"  as  a  preliminary  to  dividing  the  offices  in  private. 
If  this  assertion  was  prompted  as  much  by  a  sense  of  humor  as  by  the  bit 
terness  it  professes,  it  is  not  for  that  reason  less  worthy  to  be  taken  into 
account  as  an  explanation  of  otherwise  unexplainable  phenomena  in  Amer 
ican  history.  In  Missouri  and  in  the  country  at  large,  government  be 
tween  1866  and  1896  was  distinctly  military.  The  "soldier  vote"  con 
trolled  the  doubtful  states  and  its  demand  for  increases  of  pensions  was 
insistent  and  menacing.  The  southern  states  filled  Congress  with  the 
officers  of  the  Confederate  army  who,  while  they  were  being  constantly 
attacked  as  "paroled  prisoners"  and  "pardoned  rebels,"  were  in  no 
position  to  object  effectively  to  what  came  to  be  called  "pretorianism." 
North  and  south,  the  state  offices  not  less  than  the  federal,  were  given  as 
the  rewards  of  military  service  and,  as  has  been  said  elsewhere,  Mr. 
Bland  was  almost  unique  in  Missouri  public  life  because  of  his  lack  of  a 
war  record.  In  making  up  the  "slates"  at  conventions  the  balance  was 
carefully  adjusted  to  give  Union  and  Confederate  soldiers  equal  represen 
tation  on  the  ticket.  The  liberal  republican  element  of  1860,  represented 
by  Blair,  Bates,  Brown  and  others  who  helped  to  prevent  the  secession 
of  the  state,  worked  to  sustain  the  ex-Confederates  as  a  check  on  radical 
ism  and  out  of  such  conditions  came  a  certain  open-mindedness  in  Mis 
souri  which  was  developed  less  slowly  in  other  states.  Up  to  1888,  the 
governors  of  the  state  had  been  chosen  as  a  result  of  real  or  apparent  com 
promises  between  the  Union  and  Confederate  elements.  After  that, 
though  the  old  sectionalism  was  still  kept  at  the  front,  the  decisive  issues 
were  rather  the  antagonism  between  organized  capital  in  the  cities  and 
the  producers  of  the  country.  The  great  corporations  learned  to  select 
"Union"  or  "Confederate"  candidates  without  prejudice  as  it  suited  their 
interests  to  do  so.  One  of  the  most  heated  campaigns  ever  made  for  a 
nomination  in  the  state  was  apparently  between  Union  and  Confederate 
candidates  for  a  party  nomination,  each  one  of  whom  was  supported  by 
agents  of  the  same  corporate  combination.  The  only  real  issue  was  which 


156  AN  AMERICAN  COMMONER. 

one  of  two  agents  of  a  syndicate  should  be  promoted  for  distinguished 
success  in  serving  its  interests.  The  one  whose  candidate  secured  the 
nomination  was  promoted  and  the  nomination  itself  was  charged  to  the 
Civil  war  account  as  "Another  Victory  of  the  Rebellion." 

The  era  of  Mr.  Eland's  greatest  influence  in  the  state  dates  from  the 
time  the  syndicated  and  speculative  interests,  operating  from  St.  Louis  and 
Kansas  City,  began  this  system  of  trading  on  civil  war  sectionalism  to 
accomplish  their  own  ends.  Although  they  may  be  deceived  for  the  time 
being  in  a  particular  case,  the  people  in  communities  where  political  agi 
tation  has  been  so  incessant  as  in  Missouri,  are  very  sensitive  to  the  real 
spirit  of  politics,  and  since  the  campaign  of  1884  they  have  been  governed 
more  in  their  political  action  by  the  issue  for  and  against  that  which  Mr. 
Bland  represented  than  by  the  politics  of  the  struggle  over  slavery. 

In  1^90,  two  years  after  the  adoption  of  the  federal  constitution,  only 
one-thirtieth  of  the  population  of  the  United  States  were  residents  of  cities. 
Virginia,  which  gave  Missouri  its  institutions,  represented  the  average 
conditions  of  the  country — conditions  which  favored  a  strong  individualism 
and  the  tendency  to  openness,  frankness  and  boldness  in  dealing  with  all 
social  and  political  problems. 

In  1880,  the  proportion  of  city  residents  had  grown  to  nearly  one- 
fourth  of  the  whole  and  by  1890  it  had  approximated  one-third. 

It  is  unsafe  to  conclude  that  this  is  an  unmixed  evil.  It  was  an  inci 
dent  of  a  world-wide  movement  which  extended  from  Eastern  Russia  to 
the  Pacific  coast  of  the  United  States  and  it  was  directly  due  to  the  forces 
Mr.  Bland  represented — the  forces  of  increasing  production  for  breadstuffs, 
wool,  cotton  and  other  necessaries  and  comforts  of  life. 

Mr.  Eland's  own  constituents  in  Missouri  and  the  agricultural  produc 
ing  states  of  the  west  and  south  were  most  largely  responsible  for  it. 
Given  a  generation  of  peace  after  the  close  of  the  Civil  war  and  their  labor 
demonstrated  the  limitless  possibility  of  the  soil  to  sustain  human  life. 
They  showed  that  with  restrictive  influences  removed  and  the  power  of 


AN  AMERICAN  COMMONER.  157 

aristocracy  and  plutocracy  so  checked  as  to  allow  free  production  and  dis 
tribution,  the  plutocratic  theories  of  the  necessity  of  war,  plague  and 
famine,  are  as  much  a  delusion  as  the  other  oligarchic  idea  that  society  is 
improved  by  the  rack,  the  thumbscrew  and  the  stake.* 

Between  1880  and  1900,  the  theory  of  Mai  thus,  the  most  nearly  in 
fernal  theory  of  economy  which  the  perversion  of  human  intellect  had  ever 
originated  for  the  comfort  of  the  most  criminal  classes,  was  wiped  out  of 
the  category  of  sane  systems  of  economy.  Krapotkin  and  other  extreme  re 
formers  had  attacked  it  in  Europe  with  force  of  logic,  powerful  enough  to 
have  demonstrated  its  falsity,  if  falsity  could  be  so  demonstrated.  It  was 
overthrown,  however,  by  the  logic  of  events — not  by  that  of  words.  Men  in 
America  who  saw  in  it  the  strongest  bulwark  of  the  English  toryism  which 
was  actively  operating  for  the  control  of  America,  saw  in  the  "corn-burn 
ing  era'"  of  Kansas  the  opportunity  to  demonstrate  that  the  poverty  and 
suffering  of  the  world  are  due  to  waste,  to  restriction  and  to  oppression — 
not  to  the  laws  of  God  or  of  Nature.  They  advanced  to  the  use  of  their 
opportunity  without  menace,  without  advertisement  of  their  purpose,  but 
with  an  intelligent  understanding  of  the  vastness  of  the  possibility  of  benef 
icent  achievement  for  universal  humanity.  Mr.  Bland  was  the  one  man 
in  Congress  whose  work  made  possible  the  success  of  all  other  work  done 
by  believers  in  the  infinite  possibilities  of  development  under  liberty. 
While  some  others  were  raising  campaign  funds  and  taking  their  per 
centages,  or  quarreling  with  each  other  over  the  possession  of  the  offices, 
he  forced  the  issue  which  will  shape  the  twentieth  century  and  insure  the 
continued  progress  of  America  and  the  world  against  all  forces  of  reac 
tion. 

The  fight  for  the  largest  possible  production,  the  freest  possible  dis 
tribution,  is  a  necessary  part  if  it  be  not  logically  the  whole  of  what  is 

*The  theory  of  Malthus,  a  favorite  with  English  conservatives  and  commercial  imperialists,  in 
volves  the  idea  that  births  increase  faster  than  the  possibilities  of  food,  and  that  under  natural  conditions 
of  growth,  unrelieved  by  the  destructiveness  of  war,  pestilence  and  famine,  the  human  race  tends  to  con 
ditions  of  increasing  discomfort  finally  to  result  in  general  misery.  No  other  theory  could  have  been 
logically  used  to  support  the  policies  of  the  British  Empire  since  the  time  of  Clive  and  Hastings. 


158  AN  AMERICAN  COMMONER. 

denounced  as  "agrarianism."  The  direct  producer,  having  no  opportunity 
for  speculative  profit,  must  comply  absolutely  with  the  great  natural  law 
that  only  those  who  give  most  are  entitled  to  take  most.  Hence,  in  Mis 
souri,  as  elsewhere,  we  find  a  non-producing  element  in  the  cities  attempt 
ing  to  push  urban  populations  into  conflict  with  the  natural  laws  of  pro 
duction  and  distribution — laws  which  operate  at  all  times  as  the  forces  of 
progress,  the  governing  influences  of  civilization. 

The  speculative  element  of  St.  Louis  and  other  Missouri  cities,  con 
nected  with  the  speculative  element  in  the  east  and  in  London  by  the 
nexus  of  "banking  credits"  and  common  ownership  of  inflated  securities, 
began  to  assert  its  power  to  control  Missouri  as  soon  as  the  Civil  war 
spirit  had  so  lost  its  influence  as  to  make  the  issue  between  direct  producers 
and  speculative  dealers  and  brokers  in  products  and  money  a  decisive  one. 

General  John  S.  Marmaduke  was  the  last  governor  elected  in  Missouri 
on  civil  war  issues.  It  is  perhaps  true  that  he  was  not  intellectually  a 
great  man,  and  he  had  the  habit  which  crippled  Grant — the  habit  of  over 
stimulation  which  has  been  the  curse  of  American  politics  and  the  ruin, 
morally  and  intellectually,  of  many  who  might  otherwise  have  been  ben 
efactors  of  their  race.  But  when  this  is  said,  it  remains  true  that  at  a 
great  crisis  in  the  history  of  the  state,  the  United  States  and  the  world, 
he  made  a  stand  for  principle  which  postponed  for  nearly  two  decades  the 
reaction  towards  plutocracy  which  showed  itself  after  the  Spanish  war. 

Following  the  great  strikes  of  i877 — due  primarily  to  the  fact  that  the 
system  of  finance  and  trade,  supported  by  the  police  and  taxing  power  of 
the  federal  government,  is  restrictive  and  unfit  to  distribute  anything  ex 
cept  a  minimized  product — the  holders  of  great  fortunes  accumulated  by 
speculative  methods,  grew  frightened  and,  in  their  controlling  spirit,  fierce. 
They  were  ready  to  shoot  down  opposition  from  labor  and  by  the  use  of 
their  money  to  drive  out  of  public  life  all  who  opposed  them  in  their  policy 
of  making  government  the  vehicle  of  the  maximum  rather  than  the  min 
imum  of  coercion. 


AN  AMERICAN  COMMONER.  1 59 

They  met  in  Marmaduke  as  they  had  met  in  Sumner  a  representative 
of  the  moral  forces  of  the  "pride  of  the  gentleman,"  and  it  turned  them 
back  upon  themselves  in  impotent  anger.  From  i877,  and  for  ten  years 
thereafter,  the  plutocracy  of  consolidated  corporations,  not  satisfied  with 
buying  control  of  courts  and  legislatures,  had  begun  organizing  such  bands 
of  feudal  retainers  as  attended  the  great  landholders  of  the  middle  ages. 
These,  known  as  "Pinkertons,"  were  sometimes  kept  employed  continu 
ously  from  year  to  year  as  by  the  owners  of  certain  Missouri  coal  mines, 
or  else  were  hired  for  the  occasion  from  men  who  made  a  business  of 
recruiting  them  from  the  broken  and  desperate  men  of  the  cities  for  ship 
ment  wherever  they  were  called  for. 

Governor  Marmaduke  died  in  December,  i887,  but  in  his  short  official 
life,  he  had  done  that  for  which  he  ought  to  be  remembered  as  long  as 
manly  independence  is  admired  and  liberty  valued.  In  the  great  south 
western  strike  on  railroads  centering  in  St.  Louis,  the  speculative  element 
attempted  to  refuse  to  deal  with  the  men,  preferring  rather  to  "suppress 
the  strike"  by  the  use  of  Pinkertons  and  the  state  militia.  They  had  in 
fluence  enough  to  force  a  resolution  through  the  St.  Louis  Merchant's 
Exchange  demanding  that  this  policy  should  be  supported  by  the  state 
administration.  When  they  sent  a  delegation  to  Jefferson  City  to  intimi 
date  Governor  Marmaduke,  they  found  him  such  a  man  as  Providence 
seems  to  reserve  for  great  emergencies.  The  weakness  of  character,  for 
which  he  had  been  assailed,  disappeared.  He  showed  the  strength  which 
can  not  exist  except  as  it  is  founded  in  rectitude.  No  matter  what  threats 
were  made,  he  refused  to  allow  the  crowds  in  the  streets  of  St.  Louis  to  be 
fired  on  so  long  as  they  remained  orderly.  He  insisted  that  the  police,  not 
the  militia,  were  the  proper  guardians  of  the  peace  until  they  had  exhausted 
their  resources,  and  that  only  when  there  was  actual  and  violent  resistance 
to  the  authority  of  the  state  could  the  militia  justly  and  lawfully  open 
fire. 

While  he  may  not  have  defined  his  position  in  so  many  words,  this 


l6o  AN  AMERICAN  COMMONER. 

represents  accurately  what  it  was,  and  as  he  held  it  immovably,  the  spec 
ulative  element  was  obliged  to  exhaust  its  indignation  in  withdrawing  ad 
vertising  patronage  from  newspapers  which  supported  the  policy  represent 
ed  by  Governor  Marmaduke.  In  East  St.  Louis,  however,  where  the  forces 
of  government  were  actually  controlled  by  plutocratic  influences,  the 
streets  were  filled  with  "Pinkertons"  and  the  militia  was  ordered  out  to 
reinforce  them  in  "suppressing  the  strike." 

The  result  was  the  "East  St.  Louis  massacre"  which  opened  the  way 
for  the  campaign  against  the  employment  of  armed  bands  by  corporations — 
a  campaign  which  was  essentially  a  part  of  the  movement  which  carried 
the  northwest  and  forced  Mr.  Bland  into  national  leadership  as  a  represen 
tative  of  opposition  to  the  coercive  policies  of  speculative  commercialism. 

Of  the  speculative  spirit  of  this  period  as  it  showed  itself  in  St.  Louis, 
Chicago,  New  York  and  other  great  American  cities,  W.  S.  Aubrey,  LL. 
D.,  an  intelligent  English  student  of  American  conditions,  wrote  in  1888 : 

"In  1860,  the  national  wealth  was  estimated  at  £3,232,000,000,  and  in 
1880  at  £8,728,000,000.  In  the  interval,  a  million  of  men  had  perished 
on  the  battlefield  or  in  the  hospitals,  and  an  incalculable  amount  of  property 
had  been  destroyed.  A  comparatively  few  railroad  magnates,  and  money 
speculators,  and  contractors,  and  owners  of  mines,  and  political  adven 
turers,  and  those  interested  in  'booming  up'  real  estate,  have  grown  enor 
mously  rich,  but  farmers,  manufacturers,  tradesmen,  and  artisans  have  had 
to  suffer.  Even  where  this  has  not  been  the  case,  the  condition  of  the  latter 
classes  might  have  been  much  better,  in  the  absence  of  the  gambling  spirit 
which  seems  to  possess  almost  every  branch  of  American  commerce.  Great 
cities  like  New  York  and  Chicago  have  their  produce  exchange  or  board 
of  trade,  where  'rings'  and  'corners'  are  formed  for  mad  and  reckless 
speculation  in  all  kinds  of  commodities.  These  places  are  exaggerated 
stock  exchanges,  and  the  scenes  are  suggestive  of  Bedlam  let  loose.  The 
excitement,  the  clamor,  the  struggling,  the  rivalry,  the  contentions,  and 
the  feverish  heat  and  strain  with  which  time  bargains  are  carried  on, 
show  how  the  spirit  of  gambling  has  been  evoked.  A  single  firm  in 
Chicago,  a  few  years  ago,  gained  control  of  the  pork  market,  succeeded  in 
doubling  the  price,  and  cleared  more  than  a  million  sterling  by  the  transac- 


EUGENE   HALE. 


R.  A.  PIERCE. 


J.  R.  WILLIAMS. 


B.  R.  TILLMAX. 


AN  AMERICAN   COMMONER.  l6l 

tion,  the  influence  of  which  in  advancing  prices  was  felt  everywhere.  In 
the  New  York  Produce  Exchange  alone  the  members  buy  and  sell  (of 
course,  not  for  delivery)  two  bushels  of  wheat  for  every  one  that  is  grown 
in  the  country.  They  deal  in  five  times  the  cotton  crop  of  the  entire  south. 
Pennsylvania  yields  about  twenty-four  millions  of  barrels  of  oil  in  a  year, 
but  in  New  York  city  as  much  nominally  changes  hands  in  a  week,  and 
the  various  petroleum  exchanges  sold  last  year  two  thousand  million  bar 
rels,  or  fifty  times  the  total  yield."* 

The  importance  of  such  speculative  conditions  in  their  bearing  on  poli 
tics,  appears  at  once  when  it  is  remembered  that  men  thus  enriched  became 
directors  in  national  banks,  "trusts"  and  political  corporations  of  all  kinds. 

Alarmed  by  the  failure  to  control  Governor  Marmaduke,  this  specula 
tive  and  non-productive  element  of  St.  Louis  began  the  organized  effort, 
which  they  have  since  made  continuously,  to  control  the  state  and  to  nomi 
nate  the  candidates  of  both  parties.  Mr.  Bland  was  continuously  subjected 
to  their  attacks,  and  they  have  left  nothing  undone  to  control  the  courts, 
the  executive  offices  and  legislature.  The  political  history  of  Missouri, 
from  the  death  of  Marmaduke  in  i887  to  the  death  of  Bland  in  1899,  is 
the  history  of  the  attempt  to  supplant  American  institutions  in  Missouri 
with  the  ideas  of  men  who  are  in  principle  not  merely  imperialists,  believ 
ing  in  coercive  government  to  the  utmost  possible  extent,  but  communists, 
believing  in  it  for  the  purpose  of  using  its  coercive  powers  to  support  them 
selves  in  taking  what  they  have  not  earned. 

The  "Laissez  Faire"  Bland  stood  for,  did  not  mean  letting  such  men 
alone.  It  meant  with  him,  and  it  still  means,  opposing  them  in  all  their 
attempts  to  impose  on  society,  as  its  laws,  the  intellectual  and  moral  dis 
eases  by  which,  if  left  to  themselves,  they  will  destroy  themselves  and  the 
government  they  control. 

The  "Whirling  Dervish"  must  be  reckoned  with.  He  is  not  necessa 
rily  a  villain.  He  may  be,  and  often  is,  socially,  a  man  of  charming  traits, 
and  in  the  sum  of  things  if  he  is  not  allowed  to  have  his  own  way  with  the 

*Social  Problems  in  America,  by  W.  S.  Aubrey,  LL.  D.,  in  the  Fortnightly   Review,  London.     Re 
printed  in  the  Eclectic,  for  August,  1888. 
II 


I  62  AN  AMERICAN  COMMONER. 

universe,  he  will  demonstrate  his  usefulness.  But  to  give  him  his  own 
way,  would  mean  to  invite  the  certainty  of  destruction  for  all  the  splendid 
results  of  the  slow  and  painful  struggle  towards  civilization. 


CHAPTER  XVIII. 

"Who  Owns  the  West?" — The  Beginnings  of  a  Great  Political  Revolution. — Western 
Mortgages  and  the  "Bloody  Shirt." — How  Hon.  John  James  Ingalls  Retired 
From  Public  Life. — A  Ten  Dollar  Fac-Simile  and  its  Far-Reaching  Sequences. 
— The  Law  of  Maximum  Production  Against  Oligarchic  Restriction. — The  Work 
of  D.  M.  Grissom  in  Journalism  Complementing  that  of  Mr.  Bland  in  Congress. 
— Non-Resident  Ownership  of  Productive  Bases. — The  Centralization  of  Values 
and  the  Demand  of  Non-Residents  for  Political  Control. 


HE  laws  of  nature  operate  to  force  a  maximum  product  in 
return  for  human  activity.  The  political  and  commercial 
system,  against  which  Mr.  Bland's  life  was  a  protest,  oper 
ates  to  minimize  the  product  that  it  may  be  more  easily  con 
trolled  by  a  political  and  commercial  oligarchy.  There  can  only  be  one 
result  from  a  system  of  oligarchic  restriction,  operating  through  the  gold 
standard  and  national  bank  control  of  the  money  supply  on  one  hand  and 
on  the  other  through  stock  watering,  through  combinations  in  restraint 
of  trade,  through  duties  levied  to  prohibit  imports  and  through  speculation 
at  the  expense  of  distribution. 

Whenever  the  laws  of  nature  force  an  approximation  to  the  maximum 
product,  the  oligarchic  system  breaks  down,  and  unless  supported  by  mil 
itary  force,  those  who  have  profited  by  it,  can  not  sustain  it  so  as  to  pre 
vent  the  possibility  of  reform. 

This  principle,  felt  as  a  decisive  fact  of  politics,  if  not  so  clearly  defined 
as  it  is  here,  guided  the  work  of  those  who  joined  with  Mr.  Bland  in  forc 
ing  the  issues  which,  after  the  defeat  of  Mr.  Cleveland  by  Mr.  Harrison  in 
1888,  completely  revolutionized  "practical  politics"  in  America,  ending  for 
ever  the  era  during  which  New  York  city  and  Indiana  held  joint  dictator 
ship  over  the  sections. 

The  governing  cause  of  the  change  was  a  visible  supply  of  wheat,  cot 
ton,  corn  and  other  agricultural  products,  so  abundant  that  the  restrictive. 


164  AN  AMERICAN  COMMONER. 

system,  lacking  the  help  of  unusual  scarcity  abroad,  was  inadequate  to  dis 
tribute  them  so  as  to  realize  the  so-called  "surplus"  as  wealth.  When 
Kansas  began  burning  its  corn  for  fuel,  Mr.  John  James  Ingalls,  a  talented 
and  amiable  gentleman,  then  United  States  senator  from  the  state,  shared 
a  common  delusion  that  the  whole  art  and  mystery  of  politics  consisted 
in  animadverting  in  an  emphatic  manner,  sometimes  approximating  harsh 
ness,  on  the  sins  of  the  southern  cotton  planters — "nigger  chasers," — as  in 
a  Pickwickian  sense  the  late  Colonel  Joseph  Medill,  of  the  Chicago 
Tribune,  sometimes  called  them,  at  a  time  when  the  connection  of  the  Civil 
war  amendments  to  the  constitution  and  affairs  in  the  Philippines  had  not 
been  considered  as  it  has  been  since. 

While  Senator  Ingalls  and  many  other  talented  statesmen  of  equally 
good  intentions,  if  of  less  striking  eloquence,  were  exercising  their  talents 
in  this  seemingly  inexpensive  way,  the  roadsides  of  Kingman  and  other 
Kansas  counties  were  frequently  heaped  with  the  chattels  of  landholders, 
evicted  under  foreclosure  because  their  abundant  crops  could  not  be  dis 
tributed  and  monetized.  Mr.  Ingalls'  name  happened  to  appear  as  a  direc 
tor  on  the  letterhead  of  one  of  the  mortgage  companies  engaged  in  this 
work.  It  attracted  the  attention  of  an  acquaintance  of  Mr.  Bland — a 
newspaper  writer  who  shared  his  belief  in  the  great  disadvantages  of 
artificially  restricted  distribution.  He  offered  jestingly,  to  retire  Mr. 
Ingalls  from  politics — "bloody  shirt  and  all" — in  return  for  $10,  to  be 
expended  by  his  newspaper  in  making  a  fac-simile  of  the  mortgage 
company's  letterhead,  with  a  finger  pointing  directly  at  the  name  of  Ingalls 
among  its  directors.  The  offer  was  accepted,  though  with  the  regretful 
assertion  that  Kansas  "would  probably  elect  some  one  worse  in  his  place." 
The  fac-simile  appeared,  and  after  the  work  of  corn-burning  and  evictions 
had  proceeded  further,  the  people  of  Kansas,  supported  by  the  great  law 
that  natural  production  under  continuous  effort  tends  to  the  maximum, 
did  retire  him  from  public  life.  Presently  an  ex-Confederate  was  elected 
in  his  stead,  and  Kansas,  no  longer  "a  stronghold  of  loyalty,"  began  to 


AN  AMERICAN  COMMONER.  165 

be  denounced  as  far  east  as  London  as  a  breeding  place  for  "sockless  states 
men"  and  "long-whiskered  cranks."  With  Kansas  the  central  west  and 
the  leading  states  of  the  northwest  broke  from  the  republican  party,  and, 
regardless  of  the  sectional  lines  drawn  by  civil  war,  sided  with  the  cotton 
planting  states  against  restraint  of  trade,  and  the  use  of  governmental  force 
to  limit  production  and  distribution. 

The  two  men  who  did  most  to  give  the  initial  impetus  to  the  forces 
which  wrought  this  great  and  most  beneficent  change  were  Mr.  Bland 
and  Mr.  D.  M.  Grissom,  the  latter  of  whom  was  for  many  years  the  brains 
and  conscience  of  the  editorial  page  of  the  Missouri  Republican. 

Between  Mr.  Bland  and  Mr.  Grissom  the  perfect  understanding 
existed  which  can  exist  only  between  good  and  unselfish  men  of  high  and 
trained  intelligence.  They  seldom  saw  each  other,  and  when  they  did  it 
was  probably  to  talk  of  the  weather,  the  crops,  the  progress  of  railroad 
building  or  anything  else  rather  than  of  politics.  Mr.  Bland  seldom  wrote 
letters,  and  to  Mr.  Grissom  he  did  not  need  to  write.  What  the  one  did 
the  other  understood,  and  from  the  time  Mr.  Bland  forced  issues  on  the 
Bland- Allison  Act,  the  work  of  the  journalist  complemented  that  of  the 
statesman  until  at  last,  after  the  result  had  become  inevitable,  the  usual 
methods  of  stopping  the  work  were  resorted  to.  Through  Mr.  Bland  in 
Washington,  and  through  others,  it  went  on  without  interruption,  however, 
and  with  gathering  force  until  the  result  appeared  in  the  campaign  of  1896 
and  the  Chicago  platform. 

Mr.  Grissom  saw  that  the  restrictions  on  distribution  threatened  the 
producing  states  with  non-resident  ownership.  He  began  systematic 
work  to  demonstrate  this  and  to  check  the  process  of  centralization  through 
which  the  ownership  of  western  values  was  being  massed  in  the  control 
of  a  few  great  bankers  and  debt  brokers  in  London  and  the  larger  Amer 
ican  cities — chiefly  in  New  York  and  Boston.  He  showed  that  the 
safety  of  American  institutions,  the  welfare  of  the  people  everywhere  de 
pended  on  checking  this  movement;  and  the  figures  he  collected  were  so 


1 66  AN  AMERICAN  COMMONER. 

conclusive,  the  arguments  with  which  he  supported  them  so  unanswerable, 
that  even  after  it  was  supposed  by  some  that  he  had  been  deprived  by  their 
opposition  of  means  of  doing  effective  work,  what  he  had  done  already 
forced  republicans  in  Congress — unwilling  as  they  were  and  knowing  it 
would  be  disastrous  to  them — to  consent  to  a  census  of  the  farm-mortgage 
debt  of  the  country. 

Through  this  and  similar  measures  growing  out  of  Mr.  Eland's  work 
or  the  work  of  others  supporting  the  same  principles,  the  second  election 
of  Mr.  Cleveland  was  made  possible — as  it  never  could  have  been  had  there 
been  a  definite  issue  on  the  lines  of  his  policies  of  allowing  the  national 
banks  to  direct  his  treasury  management. 

Mr.  Grissom  made  clear,  as  it  had  never  been  before,  the  effect  of 
stock-watering  as  a  restriction  on  the  distribution  of  the  products  of  labor. 
Every  dollar  of  false  valuation  in  the  fictitious  capital  of  railroads,  grain 
elevators  and  other  agencies  of  distribution,  calls  for  "all  the  traffic  will 
bear"  in  dividends  to  be  paid  by  the  product  of  labor  before  it  can  be  so 
distributed  as  to  become  wealth.  This  restriction,  joined  to  the  restriction 
of  trade  by  prohibitive  tariffs  and  to  the  still  worse  restriction  of  the 
medium  of  exchange  by  corporation  sovereignty  over  money,  inevitably 
operated  to  force  non-resident  ownership  of  all  the  bases  of  production — 
of  land,  houses,  machinery,  and  mills  as  well  as  of  railroads,  elevators  and 
factories  for  secondary  production. 

Over  and  over  again  as  this  discussion  progressed,  the  question  "Who 
Owns  the  West?"  was  emphasized.  In  1894,  when  the  same  question 
recurred,  Mr.  Grissom  contributed  to  the  press  a  series  of  articles  similar 
to  those  which  had  forced  the  issues  on  which  President  Harrison's  re-elec 
tion  was  so  overwhelmingly  defeated.  In  one  of  these,  he  showed  the  con 
nection  between  the  watered  capitalization  of  railroads  and  the  demand  of 
the  west  for  a  natural  currency  so  strikingly  that  the  reader  will  find  in 
the  study  of  it  a  better  means  of  understanding  the  underlying  forces  of 
the  last  quarter  of  the  nineteenth  century  than  he  could  well  find  elsewhere. 


AN  AMERICAN  COMMONER.  167 

After  having  illustrated  the  vicious  effects  of  the  unsound  and  dangerous 
policy  of  centralization  and  restriction  as  it  operates  through  oligarchic 
control  of  bank-credits,  money  and  the  visible  agencies  of  production,  Mr. 
Grissom  wrote  of  the  centralized  ownership  of  inflated  railway  capital : 

"Money  and  bank  credits,  capital  and  surplus,  are  not  the  only  great 
items  that  enter  into  the  aggregate  of  wealth  of  the  northeast.  That  sec 
tion  is  very  rich  also  in  western  property — those  kinds  of  western  property 
that  are  most  available  for  drawing  annual  incomes  from — railroads, 
telegraph  and  telephone  lines,  real  estate  mortgages,  water  works,  gas 
works,  electric  light  works,  mines,  mills,  factories  and  banks. 

If  the  total  of  these  items  of  western  wealth  owned  and  controlled 
in  the  east  could  be  accurately  and  officially  stated,  it  would  startle  these 
western  bankers,  merchants  and  business  men  who  are  accustomed  to 
accept  and  adopt  eastern  theories  of  finance  because  they  are  presumed  to 
be  sound  and  safe.  But  let  us,  for  the  present,  content  ourselves  with 
those  very  important  and  conspicuous  earners  of  incomes,  western  rail 
roads.  The  actual  and  official  reports  of  them  are  at  hand,  and  strik 
ingly  presented  in  the  subjoined  tables: 

RAILROAD    INVESTMENTS    IN    ELEVEN   WESTERN    STATES — 1894. 

Capital  Stock.  Funded  Debt. 

Ohio $  463,000,000  $     480,000,000 

Michigan    111,000,000  118,000,000 

Indiana 109,000,000  138,000,000 

Illinois 430,000,000  545,000,000 

Wisconsin ..  117,000,000  193,000,000 

Missouri 275,000,000  282,000,000 

Kansas 143,000,000  280,000,000 

Colorado 116,000,000  91,000,000 

Iowa , 65,000,000  58,000,000 

Minnesota 294,000,000  351,000,000 

Nebraska 74,000,000  145,000,000 


$2,167,000,000     $2,681,000,000 


Total  investment $4,848,000,000 

INTEREST  AND  DIVIDENDS  PAID  IN  1894. 

Interest.  Dividends. 

Ohio    $  18,386,000    $     11,845,000 

Michigan ...  6,893,000  1,519,000 

Indiana .'....  5,830,000  516,000 

Illinois 25,556,000  15,181,000 

Wisconsin    9,471,000  2,319,000 

Missouri 13,521,000  1,913,000 

Kansas 10,540,000            

Colorado     3>777..ooo  473, ooo 

Iowa : , 2,427,000  356,000 

Minnesota 16,551,000  4, 163,000 

Nebraska   6,545,000             


Total $  119,397,000     $     38,285,000 


1 68  AN  AMERICAN  COMMONER. 

"The  first  of  these  tables  exhibits  about  five  billion  dollars'  worth  of 
western  railroads,  and  the  second  shows  the  interest  and  dividends  they 
yielded  last  year.  They  are  western  property,  but  they  are  not  owned  in 
the  west.  It  would  be  a  very  liberal  estimate  to  credit  five  per  cent  of  their 
value  to  the  states  in  which  they  are  found.  They  are  owned  in  the  north 
east  and  abroad,  and  the  $119,397,000  interest  paid  on  their  bonds  and 
$38,285,000  paid  in  dividends  on  their  stocks — making  a  total  of  $157,682,- 
ooo — is  drained  off  to  swell  the  incomes  of  their  bondholders  and  stock 
holders  in  the  northeast  and  Europe. 

This,  perhaps,  is  not  a  matter  that  we  have  a  right  to  complain  of, 
since  the  non-resident  owners  of  these  western  railroads  have  a  right  to 
claim  their  own  and  do  what  they  please  with  it.  But  it  may  be  sug 
gested  that  it  is  a  matter  of  tremendous  concern  whether  this  annual  drain 
of  $157,682,000  shall  be  paid  in  free  coined  silver  worth  100  cents  to  the 
dollar,  or  in  gold  or  at  a  gold  standard  of  200  cents  to  the  dollar.  Or,  to 
put  it  in  another  way,  in  wheat  at  $i  and  corn  at  50  cents  a  bushel,  or  in 
wheat  at  50  cents  and  corn  at  25  cents  a  bushel." 

Mr.  Bland  once  estimated  that  of  the  American  values  thus  centralized 
in  non-resident  hands,  about  five  billion  (five  thousand  million  dollars)  are 
held  or  controlled  by  English  or  other  European  capitalists.  It  never  oc 
curred  to  him  that  these  capitalists  ought  to  be  deprived  of  any  right  of 
property  representing  an  honest  investment.  It  did  seem  to  him  unreason 
able,  unjust  and  in  the  highest  degree  destructive  of  the  foundations  of 
political  and  economic  morality,  that  stocks  and  bonds  issued  to  represent 
non-existing  values  and  used  to  take  from  the  producer  a  percentage  of 
his  product  for  which  nothing  at  all  was  given  him — that  based  on  such 
an  obvious  fraud  as  this,  these  holdings  in  the  hands  of  non-residents 
should  be  used  to  control  the  domestic  politics  of  America  so  as  to  force 
the  payment  of  dividends  in  the  dearest  possible  money — that  is,  in  the 
cheapest  possible  wheat,  cotton,  corn  and  other  products  sold  by  America 
and  bought  by  Europe.* 


*In  a  coinage  catechism,  "The  People's  Dollars,"  issued  in  1896,  Mr.  Grissom  gave  this  illustra 
tion  of  the  enormous  debt  inflation  outstanding  against  American  producers— especially  against  the  di 
rect  producers  of  the  corn,  wheat  and  cotton  states : 


AN  AMERICAN  COMMONER.  l6g 

INDEBTEDNESS  OF  THE  WEST  AND  SOUTH. 

Q.    Are  there  any  reliable  methods  of  estimating  the  aggregate  indebtedness  you  speak  of? 

A.  Yes;  the  census  reports,  the  reports  of  state  railroad  commissioners,  Poor's  Railroad  Manual, 
and  other  official  statements  put  forth  at  Washington,  and  at  the  state  capitals,  enable  us  to  make  a  very 
close  approximation. 

There  is  the  national  debt  to  begin  with— $962,430,000— nearly  three-fourths  of  which,  say,  $600,- 
000,000,  rests  upon  the  people  of  the  western,  southern,  mountain  and  Pacific  states,  according  to  popu 
lation. 

The  aggregate  state,  county,  city,  district  and  town  debts  of  these  states  are  $500,000,000. 

Next  take  the  railroad  and  real  estate  mortgage  debts.  The  bonded  and  floating  debt  of  the  Illinois 
railroads  is  $312,000,000,  and  the  real  estate  mortgages  in  the  same  state  amount  to  $380,000,000,  making  a 
total  for  Illinois  of  $692,000,000. 

The  Kansas  railroads  are  bonded  for  $210,000,000  and  the  farms  and  other  real  estate  are  mortgaged 
for  $160,000,000  more— making  a  total  for  Kansas  of  $370,000,000. 

The  railroad  debt  of  Missouri  is  $142,000,000  and  the  real  estate  mortgage  indebtedness  is  estimated 
at  $100,000,000— making  a  total  for  Missouri  of  $242,000,000. 

The  railroad  debts  and  farm  mortgage  debts  of  these  three  states  alone — Illinois,  Kansas  and  Mis 
souri,  therefore  amount  to  $1,304,000,000. 

The  railroad  mileage  of  all  the  western,  southern  and  mountain  states  is  134,000  miles,  and  the 
bonded  debt  on  them  is  an  average  of  $26,000  a  mile,  making  a  total  of  $3,484,000,000. 

Their  aggregate  real  estate  mortgage  debts  would  be  very  moderately  estimated  at  $2,000,000,000. 

Summing  up  these  several  items,  we  have  the  following  statement  of  the 

INDEBTEDNESS  OF  THE  WESTERN,  SOUTHERN  AND  MOUNTAIN  STATES. 

Share  of  the  National  debt $    600,000,000 

State,  county,  city,  town  and  district 500,000,000 

Railroad  debt 3,484,000,000 

Real  estate  and  mortgage  debt 2,000,000,000 

Total $6,584,000,000 


CHAPTER  XIX. 

The  Balance  of  Power  in  the  Electoral  College  Passes  to  the  Northwest. — Modifica 
tions  of  the  Sectional  Issue  Which  Had  Been  Forced  by  the  Mexican  Conquest. 
— Robert  Toombs  on  the  Domestic  Consequences  of  Aggression  Abroad. — The 
Sword  as  a  Title  to  Territory. — Toombs  and  Stephens  of  Georgia  Isolated  Under 
Polk's  Administration  in  their  Attempt  to  Prevent  Civil  War. — Their  Opposi 
tion  to  the  Treaty  of  Guadaloupe  Hidalgo. — Toombs  Accepts  War  as  an 
Inevitable  Result  of  the  Annexation  of  Mexican  Territory  and  Becomes  a 
Radical  Secessionist  in  1850. — The  South  Changes  Front  in  1889  and  Abandons 
the  Struggle  for  Sectional  Equality  in  the  Electoral  College. — President 
Cleveland's  First  Administration  as  it  Provoked  Political  Revolution. —  "Ex 
pansion,"  the  Nicaragua  Canal,  the  Annexation  of  the  West  Indies,  and  the 
Nullification  of  the  Constitution  as  Discussed  by  Mr.  E.  V.  Smalley  in  1880. 
— Effect  of  the  Civil  War  on  Constitutional  Interpretation. — The  Republican 
Reaction  Against  Grant.— Mr.  Cleveland  as  a  Representative  of  the  "Better 
Element." 


HE  sectional  division  of  the  Civil  war,  as    it  governed  so  long 
in  the  electoral  college,  was  virtually  abandoned  in  1889, 
when  the  northwestern  states  were  admitted.  From  the  time 
of  the  Wilmot  Proviso    until  1889,  American    policies  had 
been  decided  chiefly  by  the  invasion  of  Mexico  and  the  contest  over  terri 
tory  extorted  from  that  helpless  republic.     In  1850,  Robert  Toombs,  speak 
ing  in  the  House  of  Representatives  said  of  California  and  New  Mexico : 

"These  are  the  first  fruits  of  successful  war.  We  have  borne  our  full 
share  of  its  burdens — we  demand  an  equal  participation  in  its  benefits.  The 
rights  of  the  south  are  consecrated  by  the  blood  of  her  children.  The 
sword  is  the  title  by  which  the  nation  acquired  that  country.  The  thought 
is  suggestive;  wise  men  will  ponder  over  it;  brave  men  will  act  upon  it.  I 
foresaw  the  dangers  of  this  question.  I  warned  the  country  of  these  dan 
gers.  From  the  day  the  first  gun  was  fired  upon  the  Rio  Grande  until  the 
act  was  consummated  by  all  the  departments  of  this  government,  I  resisted 
all  acquisition  of  territory.  My  honorable  colleague  before  me  (Alexander 
H.  Stephens)  and  I,  standing  upon  the  ground  taken  by  the  republican 

170 


AN  AMERICAN  COMMONER.  171 

party  in  1796  against  Jay's  treaty,  voted  against  appropriating  the  money 

to  carry  out  the  treaty  of  Guadaloupe  Hidalgo I  saw  no  prospect  of 

adjusting  the  question  which  the  acquisition  would  present.  I  therefore 
resisted  a  policy  which  threatened  the  ruin  of  the  south  and  the  subversion 
of  the  government.  And  to-day,  men  of  the  north,  these  are  the  alterna 
tives  you  present !  We  demand  an  equal  participation  in  the  whole  country 
acquired  or  a  division  of  it  between  the  north  and  south."* 

Toombs,  Stephens  and  other  educated  men  at  the  south  saw  as  clearly 
as  did  Corwin  and  Sumner  at  the  north,  that  the  dismemberment  of  Mexico 
would  force  civil  war,  and  from  1850,  when  the  issue  came  on  California, 
Toombs  seemed  to  have  accepted  war  as  already  begun  in  everything  ex 
cept  the  actual  operation  of  armies  in  the  field.  Ceasing  to  plead  for  peace 
and  justice  as  he  had  done  in  opposing  the  Mexican  conquest,  (when,  as 
he  said,  he  had  no  support  at  all  from  the  south  and  only  six  votes  from  the 
north)  he  seemed  to  have  taken  it  for  granted  that  the  country  must  suffer 
the  dreadful  consequences  of  its  own  injustice.!  No  one,  after  the  issue 
came  on  the  organization  of  the  first  territory  acquired  from  Mexico,  was 
a  fiercer  partisan  of  the  south  than  was  he.  "When  argument  is  exhausted, 
we  will  stand  by  our  arms,"  he  said  in  the  same  speech  from  which  quota 
tion  has  been  made  above. 

When,  because  of  the  quarrel  forced  on  Mexico,  the  south  had  been 
ruined  as  he  feared  it  would  be;  when  the  old  alignment  in  Congress  and 
the  electoral  college  had  become  a  mere  reminiscence  of  the  unrepented 
injustices  of  both  sections,  the  old  struggle  over  the  admission  of  new 
states  was  continued  from  force  of  habit  until  the  question  of  bimetallism 
against  corporation  paper  money  opened  the  way  to  new  issues  and  a  new 
era  in  national  politics. 

After  the  south  had  been  "raided"  under  Grant  by  the    speculative 

*Volume  IX,  World's  Best  Orations,  page  3643. 

tAccording  to  the  report  of  the  provost  marshal  general  the  total  of  deaths  in  battle  and  from  wounds 
and  disease  during  the  Civil  war  was  413,225 — or  probably  ten  American  lives  sacrificed  for  every 
Mexican  killed  in  acquiring  the  territory  which,  -in  the  judgment  of  Mr.  Toombs  of  Georgia  and  Mr. 
Corwin  of  Ohio,  made  civil  war  so  clearly  inevitable  that  both  joined  in  predicting  it  and  in  preparing 
for  it  ten  years  before  it  came  openly. 


172  AN  AMERICAN  COMMONER. 

financiers  who  used  the  imperialism  (militant  commercialism)  General 
Grant  represented  to  bond  the  southern  states  wherever  they  could  control 
their  legislatures,  the  south  saw  only  one  recourse — to  destroy  its  own 
credit  so  that  the  process  could  not  be  repeated.  It  is  said  that,  when 
Alabama  was  discussing  the  repudiation  of  a  debt  fraudulently  imposed 
by  financiers  who  controlled  the  United  States  army  as  a  factor  in  their 
operations,  an  agent  of  the  bondholders,  who  argued  that  the  "credit  of  the 
state  would  be  hopelessly  ruined  in  the  markets  of  the  world,"  was  told 
that  this  was  exactly  what  was  wanted;  that  the  property  owners  of  the 
state  had  no  safety  from  confiscation  so  long  as  one  bond  issue  after 
another  could  be  floated  against  their  property  by  legislatures  controlled 
by  speculators  supported  by  United  States  troops.* 

Such  answers  were  in  their  way  conclusive,  but,  disgusted  with  the 
south  as  a  field  for  "investment,"  great  speculative  combinations  of  ban 
kers,  steamship  owners  and  railroads  operating  from  London  and  New 
York,  deflected  immigration  to  the  northwest  and  used  all  possible  means  to 
populate  the  Dakotas,  Montana,  Washington,  Idaho  and  Wyoming  rapidly 
in  order  to  use  their  votes  in  the  Senate  and  electoral  college  in  support 
of  plutocratic  policies  against  the  agricultural  producers  of  the  south. 

Hence  when  the  bills  admitting  these  territories  as  states  came  up  for 
passage,  there  was  inevitable  southern  opposition.  The  attitude  of  thinkers 
in  Missouri  who  had  been  greatly  influenced  by  Mr.  Eland's  work  was 
decisive  against  the  continuance  of  the  sectional  struggle.  It  was  believed 
that  if  all  southern  opposition  to  the  admission  of  the  northwest  were  with 
drawn,  the  new  states  would  be  forced  by  the  logic  of  events  and  their  own 
economic  necessities  for  a  maximum  distribution,  to  oppose  the  minimized 


*Mr.  Henry  Clews  is  almost  pathetic  in  his  discussion  of  such  southern  ingratitude.  "One  of  the 
saddest  events  of  my  business  experience  arose  from  the  purest  motives  on  my  part,"  he  says  in  the 
twenty-seventh  chapter  of  his  valuable  book  on  Wall  Street.  "I  ventured  my  money  and  offered  my 
friendship  at  a  time  when  that  section  of  the  country  stood  in  need  of  both  money  and  friendship.  .  .  . 
For  these  kindly  offices  I  was  treated  with  the  basest  ingratitude  by  some  of  the  southern  states."  Mr. 
Clews  is  referring  more  particularly  to  Georgia  and  Alabama,  which,  when  relieved  from  control  by 
military  garrisons,  refused  to  recognize  the  moral  obligation  of  claims  urged  on  their  gratitude  by  those 
who  had  promoted  bond  issues  during  the  reconstruction  period. 


AN  AMERICAN  COMMONER.  1 73 

distribution  insisted  on  by  combinations  of  corporations  which  were  now 
showing  their  determination  to  become  a  permanent  plutocracy  and  to 
supplant  republican  institutions  with  oligarchy.  Opposition  to  the  admis 
sion  of  the  northwest  was  accordingly  withdrawn  or  made  formal.  North 
Dakota,  South  Dakota,  Montana  and  Washington  were  admitted  in  1889 
and  Idaho  and  Wyoming  hi  1890 — though  Utah,  as  supposably  a  demo 
cratic  state,  was  kept  out  until  1896;  and  the  people  of  New  Mexico,  who 
were  acquired  by  conquest  two  generations  ago,  are  still  excluded. 

The  result  of  the  admission  of  the  northwest  fully  justified  this  antic 
ipation.  The  fight  from  this  time  on  was  made  intelligently  for  the  break 
ing  down  of  civil  war  sectionalism  as  the  first  consideration.  It  was  fully 
understood  that  the  continued  support  of  the  democratic  party  by  the  "solid 
south"  would  not  be  possible  when  the  republican  party  was  no  longer  sup 
ported  by  the  solid  west.  Partisanship,  however,  was  the  least  weighty 
of  the  considerations  which  determined  the  action  of  those  who,  in  spite 
of  protest  from  party  leaders,  began  forcing  Mr.  Bland  to  the  front,  disre 
garding  well-meant  warnings  that  "the  east  would  never  stand  it." 

There  was  a  deep-seated  conviction  that  the  refusal  of  the  east  to 
"stand  it"  would  be  greatly  beneficial  to  the  country  at  large  and  finally  to 
the  east  itself,  if  it  should  result — as  seemed  inevitable — in  destroying 
the  dictatorship  exercised  over  the  solid  south  and  solid  west  by  capitalistic 
combinations  which  controlled  New  York  city  and  Indiana  as  a  balance 
of  power  in  the  electoral  college. 

The  amount  of  capital  they  represented  was  so  great ;  their  influence 
through  their  control  of  banking  credits  and  of  railroad  privileges  so  far 
reaching,  that  the  success  of  the  movement  to  cut  them  off  from  their  base 
in  national  politics  might  never  have  been  possible  if  they  had  not  believed 
success  impossible  for  it.  They  ridiculed  it  as  "the  rainbow  chasing  cam 
paign"  and  except  to  ridicule  it,  paid  little  or  no  attention  to  it  until  the 
northwest  had  broken  away  from  them  and  had  established  a  new  balance 
of  power  in  national  politics. 


174  AN  AMERICAN  COMMONER. 

The  whole  trend  of  events  under  the  first  Cleveland  administration 
was  in  the  direction  of  political  revolution — though  Mr.  Cleveland  him 
self  pursued  what  his  advisers  considered  a  carefully  conservative  policy. 

Politically  Mr.  Cleveland,  though  convinced  of  his  own  staunch 
"democracy,"  was  a  stubborn,  old-school  whig,  with  ideas  and  sympathies 
paralleling  those  of  Henry  Clay,  in  most  things,  though  he  leaned  toward 
federalism  more  strongly  than  Clay  or  even  than  Hamilton  himself. 
Probably,  however,  he  was  not  aware  of  this  himself  until  he  learned  it  in 
the  Pullman  strike  when  he  ordered  troops  into  a  "sovereign  state" — not 
merely  without  the  call  of  the  governor,  but  against  his  protest.  This 
is  one  of  the  class  of  things  pronounced  impossible  by  Alexander  Ham 
ilton,  in  his  speeches  in  the  New  York  convention  called  to  pass  on  the  Fed 
eral  Constitution.  The  time  had  come,  however,  when  the  New  York  pol 
itician,  who  had  asked  in  perfect  good  faith,  "What  is  the  Constitution 
between  friends?"  represented  not  merely  the  attitude  of  his  own  imme 
diate  associates  toward  constitutional  government,  but  that  of  a  majority 
of  the  "practical  politicians"  of  the  country.  Few  of  them  had  read  it  and 
fewer  still  cared  for  it.  In  a  remarkable  article,  (republished  in  the 
Library  Magazine  for  1880)  suggesting  the  movement  for  new  conquests 
of  territory  to  be  held  under  the  colonial  system,  Mr.  E.  V.  Smalley,  a  high 
authority  among  those  who  attach  no  importance  to  constitutional  restric 
tions  in  government,  said: 

"One  thing  we  may  be  satisfied  of  at  the  start.  Constitutional  restric 
tions  will  not  long  fetter  the  people  in  their  efforts  to  realize  the  ideas  of  a 
broader  and  more  potent  nationality  which  are  now  germinating  in  their 
minds.  The  day  of  the  worship  of  old  forms  and  instruments  has  gone 
by.  The  old  belief  in  the  infallibility  of  the  Constitution,  which  exercised 
a  profound  influence  upon  the  political  thought  and  activity  of  the  country 
during  the  first  half  of  the  century,  no  longer  exists.  It  received  a  rude 
shock  when  it  was  made  apparent  that  the  so-called  sacred  instrument  had 
made  no  provision  for  the  unity  and  perpetuity  of  the  nation.  It  was  an 
open  question  whether  the  right  of  secession  existed  or  not The  time 


AN  AMERICAN  COMMONER.  1 75 

will  doubtless  come  when  we  shall  make  larger  efforts,  stimulated  by  a 
wise  government  policy,  to  extend  our  commerce  through  the  world  and  we 
shall  seek  with  prudence,  patience  and  sagacity  to  bring  all  lands  and 
regions  in  North  America  under  our  control.  In  that  time  we  shall  foster 
our  mercantile  marine,  instead  of  burdening  it  with  imposts  and  shall  give 
it  the  protection  of  a  powerful  navy.  A  railroad  through  Mexico,  Central 
America  and  the  Isthmus  to  South  America,  will  be  constructed  with 
American  capital  as  a  national  undertaking  of  immense  future  importance. 
The  Panama  Canal,  whether  built  by  De  Lesseps  or  by  our  own  engineers, 
will  be  completely  under  American  control.  The  Canadian  provinces, 
inhabited  as  they  are  by  people  of  our  own  race  and  language,  accustomed 
to  public  education  and  self  government,  will  be  brought  to  see  how  barren 
of  promise  is  their  colonial  condition  and  how  greatly  their  material  and 
intellectual  development  will  be  furthered  by  a  union  with  us.  Without 
compulsion  or  unfriendliness  on  our  part,  but  simply  as  the  result  of  a  wise, 
persistent  policy  looking  to  their  voluntary  annexation,  they  will 
finally  become  states  of  the  American  Union.  We  shall  thus  receive  an 
accession  of  nearly  four  millions  of  population  and  shall  obliterate  our  only 
long  inland  frontier,  and  open  to  our  people  whatever  resources  the  extreme 
north  may  have  hidden  behind  the  screen  of  Canadian  lethargy. 

The  West  India  islands  and  the  tropical  continental  lands  of  Mexico 
and  Central  America,  with  their  degraded  mixed  populations  and  their 
climate  working  against  the  development  of  a  vigorous,  progressive  race, 
are  not  likely  to  be  made  partners  in  our  governmental  system — not,  at 
least,  until  they  can  be  thoroughly  regenerated  by  fresh  blood  and  the 
influences  of  Anglo-Saxon  civilization.  They  may,  however,  come  into  a 
condition  of  partial  union  and  be  brought  within  the  range  of  our  postal 
and  customs  system ;  and  thus  be  fully  opened  to  our  commercial,  mining, 
and  agricultural  activities.  There  can  be  little  doubt  that  before  the  ten 
dency  toward  gigantic  nationalities  is  exhausted  and  replaced  by  another 
form  of  development,  the  whole  of  North  America  will  be  brought  under 
one  government,  and  that  that  government,  imperial  in  power,  though  not 
in  form  or  name,  will  be  the  government  of  the  United  States."* 

A  special  importance  attaches  to  the  date  of  this  article.  It  is  so  strik 
ingly  like  the  speeches  made  in  St.  Louis,  at  Springfield  and  elsewhere  by 


'Library  Magazine  for  1880,  Vol.  VI. 


176  AN  AMERICAN  COMMONER. 

those  who  were  attempting  to  force  Mr.  Bland  to  the  rear  in  1898,  that  it 
might  seem  to  be  re-hashed  from  one  of  them.  But  is  merely  a  part  of  the 
sequence  of  events  working  uninterruptedly  from  the  invasion  of  Mexico 
to  Appomattox,  from  Appomattox  to  the  Grant  administration  and  from 
the  admission  of  the  northwest  to  the  end  of  the  century. 

When  the  struggle  for  the  rehabilitation  of  constitutional  govern 
ment — for  that  was  its  meaning — was  begun  with  due  caution  after  the 
election  of  Mr.  Cleveland,  and  in  support  of  what  Bland  stood  for  as  against 
the  forces  back  of  Mr.  Cleveland,  it  was  well  understood  that  the  last 
resort  of  those  whose  wrongful  privileges  would  be  threatened  by  it  was 
foreign  war  and  the  renewal  of  the  imperialism  of  the  Grant  administra 
tion.  In  view  of  such  articles  as  that  from  Mr.  Smalley,  quoted  above, 
it  required  no  special  insight  to  perceive  this,  nor  in  1897  and  1898,  when, 
without  a  change  of  issues,  the  defeat  of  the  McKinley  administration 
on  the  issue  of  restraint  of  trade  through  high  tariffs  and  the  gold  stan 
dard  was  certain,  did  it  require  a  special  faculty  of  divination  to  understand 
in  whose  service  speeches,  reproducing  the  "expansion"  arguments  of 
the  Grant  administration,  were  made. 

The  logic  of  this  argument  is  that  assuming  it  can  not  be  demonstrated 
that  there  was  constitutional  warrant  for  suppressing  the  southern  Confed 
eracy,  therefore  constitutional  government  is  a  failure  and  the  logic  of  the 
maximum  of  coercion  is  the  sole  logic  of  government.  Hence,  "expan 
sion,"  foreign  war,  acquisition  of  territory  by  conquest  and  "national 
glory,"  was  the  last  ditch  of  the  international  oligarchy  of  corporations 
which,  with  its  agents  working  for  salaries,  fees  or  political  promotion  in 
both  the  great  parties  in  America,  aspired  to  revolutionize  the  government 
and  to  establish  a  new  order  of  things,  "imperial  in  power  though  not  in 
form  or  name." 

Those  who  stood  with  Mr.  Bland  in  1898  understood  this,  and 
when  it  was  proposed  to  them  to  "pair"  with  the  republican  adminis 
tration  in  carrying  it  out — using  the  United  States  army  to  annex 


THE  BLAND  RESIDENCE  NEAR  LEBANON. 


WHERE  MR.  BLAND  LIVED  IN  WASHINGTON. 


AN  AMERICAN  COMMONER.  1 77 

Cuba  "by  consent"  and  advancing  along  the  lines  of  "expansion"  to  the 
realization  of  this  "manifest  destiny,"  the  reply  given  was  that  so  long 
as  there  was  standing  room  in  America  to  oppose  such  a  policy,  it  ought  to 
be  opposed  regardless  of  personal  or  partisan  considerations.* 

The  chain  of  cause  and  effect,  from  the  movement  for  wresting  the 
west  for  the  republican  party  to  that  of  1898  which  put  Fitzhugh  Lee  and 
General  Wheeler  at  the  front  in  doing  imperial  garrison  duty  in  govern 
ing  Cuba  and  the  Philippines,  is  not  only  clear  now,  but  it  has  been  unmis 
takably  clear  during  the  whole  course  of  its  development.  Hence,  we  may 
leave  it  for  the  time  being,  and  return  to  the  immediate  causes  of  the 
political  revolution  which  preceded  it. 

The  republican  reaction  against  Grant  carried  that  party  away  from 
the  ultra-restrictive  ideas  of  militant  commercialism.  After  Hayes,  Gar- 
field  and  Arthur,  there  was  no  violent  change  involved  in  seating  Mr. 
Cleveland.  He  adopted  their  treasury  policies  without  change,  and  Mr. 
Daniel  Manning,  a  national  banker,  was  put  in  control  of  the  treasury  as 
a  guarantee  that  there  would  be  no  change.  On  the  tariff,  Mr.  Cleveland 
held  the  view  of  Clay,  that  the  duties  should  cover  the  difference  in  labor- 
cost  between  the  United  States  and  foreign  countries.  He  was  thus  in 
principle  a  protectionist,  and  by  abolishing  duties  on  raw  material,  he  would 
often  have  actually  increased  the  percentage  of  protection  given  the  manu 
facturer.  If  anything  short  of  the  prohibitive  principle,  applied  through 
taxation  adjusted  by  themselves,  would  have  satisfied  the  great  syndicated 
corporations  of  the  republican  party,  Mr.  Cleveland  would  have  done  it. 


*Mr.  Eland's  own  attitude  in  1898  was  defined  in  the  following  letter  written  from  Lebanon, 
Missouri,  on  July  22, 1898,  and  supplied  by  the  recipient  for  publication  in  this  work: 

LEBANON,  Mo.,  July  22,  1898. 
W.  V.  BYARS,  ESQ., 

St.  Louis,  Mo. 
FRIEND  BYARS:— 

Your  letter  received.  I  do  not  believe  there  is  any  danger  of  our  party  adopting  a  platform  of 
principles  looking  to  the  jingo  politics  of  island  acquisition  and  colonial  greed,  to  be  supplemented  and 
sustained  with  a  large  standing  army  and  navy.  I  do  not  think  the  party  is  ready  yet  for  suicide. 

Yours, 

R.  P.  BLAND. 
12 


178  AN  AMERICAN  COMMONER. 

He  had  held  these  ideas  from  the  first  and  had  made  no  secret  of  them. 
In  1884,  when  his  candidacy  was  first  announced,  his  failure  to  define 
himself  more  exactly  in  accordance  with  the  views  of  the  opponents  of 
restraint  of  trade,  had  led  to  the  movement  in  Missouri  to  nominate  Mr. 
Bayard,  and  his  celebrated  "tariff  reform  message"  involved  no  change  of 
attitude  whatever.  It  was  a  document  Henry  Clay  himself,  the  father  of 
the  "home  market"  idea,  might  easily  have  written,  and  it  is  now  clear  that 
no  reform  of  the  tariff  was  possible  along  its  lines  of  protecting  manufac 
turers  of  secondary  products  at  the  expense  of  the  direct  producer. 

The  marked  feature  of  Mr.  Cleveland's  administration,  which  differ 
entiated  it  from  any  other  during  the  quarter  of  a  century  to  which  it  be 
longed,  was  its  freedom  from  civil  war  sectionalism.  Mr.  Cleveland  cared 
nothing  at  all  about  the  glorious  work  done  by  Americans  of  different  sec 
tions  in  killing  each  other.  He  had  progressed  intellectually  beyond  the 
stage  of  merely  animal  antagonism.  He  had  no  desire  to  kill  any  one  and 
no  admiration  for  those  who  did  have  it.  In  this,  more  than  anything  else, 
he  approximated  Thomas  Jefferson,  and  no  other  quality  of  intellect  and 
morals  he  could  have  had  would  have  been  more  valuable  to  the  world  in 
his  generation.  He  filled  his  cabinet  impartially  with  "ex-rebels"  and 
with  representatives  of  the  "better  element"  in  the  Atlantic  states.  For 
the  "unwashed  democracy"  of  the  masses  in  the  Atlantic  states  he  had  a 
great  contempt — looking  on  them  as  a  corrupt  and  dangerous  element 
whose  share  in  the  government  ought  to  be  minimized. 

In  all  the  policies  to  which  he  was  committed  by  such  sympathies,  he 
helped  on  the  great  work  of  breaking  down  the  lines  of  civil  war.  He 
shocked  southern  democrats  beyond  expression.  "Great  God!"  ex 
claimed  a  Virginia  editor,  commenting  on  something  Mr.  Cleveland  had 
said  soon  after  his  inauguration  in  1885 ;  "Great  God,  is  this  the  language 
of  the  President  of  the  United  States  or  of  a  Buffalo  tough !"  The  next 
day  the  same  editor  was  writing  editorials  as  strong  as  ever  in  support  of 
the  administration.  He  had  relieved  his  feelings  and  relapsed  into  his 


AN  AMERICAN  COMMONER.  I/) 

party  allegiance.  Mr.  Cleveland  was  not  a  "Buffalo  tough,"  however, 
and  he  was  President  of  the  United  States.  He  was  so  far  from  sympa 
thizing  with  the  "tough"  element  of  American  politics,  that  at  the  last  anal 
ysis,  the  policies  of  his  administrations  will  be  found  to  have  been  dictated 
by  the  aristocratic  idea  that  the  good  and  wise,  the  virtuous,  well-fed  and 
"well-soaped"  elements  of  society  are,  by  divine  right  of  their  virtue  and 
cleanliness,  entitled  to  administer  government  "as  a  sacred  trust"  under 
which  "fitness  is  the  sole  test." 

Whatever  merits  this  idea  may  have,  it  is  in  the  strongest  possible 
antagonism  to  the  Missouri  idea  of  democracy  represented  by  Benton  and 
Bland,  and  if  it  had  not  been  for  the  race  question  at  the  south  and  the 
menacing  attitude  of  republican  leaders  on  it,  Missouri  would  have  broken 
away  from  Mr.  Cleveland  at  the  start. 

The  Missouri  feeling  towards  him  was  well-illustrated  when  he 
"flipped  out"  M.  E.  Benton,  United  States  district  attorney  for  the  western 
district  of  Missouri,  for  making  a  political  speech  to  a  small  gathering  of 
no  special  importance  in  politics.  Some  one  had  complained  (probably 
to  test  the  merits  of  Mr.  Cleveland's  threat  to  "flip  out  offensive  parti 
sans"),  and  Mr.  Benton  was  violently  evicted  as  a  warning  to  others.  An 
influential  democratic  newspaper  in  Missouri  publicly  requested  the  admin 
istration  to  restore  Mr.  Benton  to  office  at  once  on  the  ground  that  he  had 
never  been  indicted  and  that  the  number  of  Mr.  Cleveland's  appointees  in 
Missouri,  who  had  not  been  indicted,  ought  by  no  means  to  be  diminished. 
It  also  offered  to  print  for  Mr.  Cleveland's  information  the  old  indictments 
against  appointees  who  had  been  left  in  office  as  "inoffensive  partisans" 
while  Mr.  Benton  was  being  "flipped  out."  This  seems  to  have  surprised 
Mr.  Cleveland  or  his  advisers  greatly  and  perhaps  to  have  weakened  his 
confidence  in  those  who  sign  the  recommendations  of  applicants  for  office. 
At  any  rate  he  restored  Mr.  Benton  to  office  after  having  so  popularized 
him  in  Missouri  that  the  effects  are  still  evident. 

As  a  result  of  his  sympathy  for  the  "better  element"  in  government 


I  So  AN  AMERICAN   COMMONER. 

and  of  his  financial  policies,  Mr.  Cleveland  broke  the  "solid  south."  North 
Carolina  elected  a  legislature  against  him,  and  the  opposition  to  his  admin 
istration  claimed  with  a  show  of  probability  that  they  had  carried  Arkansas 
in  the  "off  year."  The  third  party  movement  received  a  great  impetus 
everywhere,  and  the  south  would  have  probably  divided  permanently  but 
for  the  republican  threat  of  a  "force  bill'  and  for  one  of  the  most  remark 
able  phenomena  of  modern  economics. 

Up  to  the  close  of  the  first  Cleveland  administration,  the  policy  of 
reducing  the  national  debt  was  carried  out  with  an  approximation  to  good 
faith.  As  a  result,  large  sums  of  money,  locked  up  in  bonds  as  family 
endowments,  were  forced  to  seek  investments  either  in  real  estate  or  in 
productive  enterprises. 

The  extent  to  which  bonds  are  used  as  a  means  of  endowing  families 
and  institutions,  which  it  is  desired  to  put  beyond  the  operations  of  the 
natural  laws  of  redistribution,  is  hardly  realized  as  yet  by  students  of 
economics.  It  has  been  one  of  the  great  revolutionary  forces  in  the  cen 
tralization  of  the  nineteenth  century.  Mr.  Cleveland,  in  continuing  to  pay 
off  the  debt,  threatened  to  inaugurate  a  new  era  in  finance  and  business 
as  well  as  in  social  life.  The  family  hoards  released  from  bonds  came 
west  to  find  safe  investment  and  larger  interest  in  mortgages  on  real  estate, 
or  went  south  to  develop  mines  and  establish  factories.  The  immediate 
result  was  "the  new  south  movement"  and  the  unprecedented  "boom"  in 
western  real  estate.  The  idea  of  the  safety  of  real  estate  as  an  investment 
had  so  strong  a  hold  on  the  believers  in  permanent  endowments  that  for 
a  time  the  owners  of  farms  and  city  lots  in  Kansas  and  other  western 
states  were  actively  solicited  by  the  agents  of  rival  mortgage  companies 
to  borrow  the  money  of  endowed  families  and  corporations.  Under  the 
influence  of  this  competition,  thrifty  and  prudent  people  were  so  far 
demoralized  by  the  speculative  spirit  that  new  towns  in  Kansas  were  fitted 
out  with  "palatial"  court  houses,  high  schools,  electric  lighting  plants  and 
other  modern  improvements,  which,  when  the  "boom"  collapsed,  brought 


AN  AMERICAN  COMMONER.  l8l 

them  to  the  worst  possible  straits.  In  one  instance  it  is  said  that  they 
surrendered  the  town  to  their  insistent  creditors  and  moved  away  to 
another  site,  leaving  their  public  buildings  in  the  hands  of  the  holders  of 
the  mortgages  on  them. 

If,  in  the  given  case,  this  is  an  exaggeration,  it  illustrates  general  con 
ditions  which  were  consequent  on  the  cessation  of  national  debt  redemp 
tion.  When  money  was  no  longer  forced  out  of  bonds,  investments  in  the 
south  and  west  began  to  slacken,  and  finally,  under  the  Harrison  adminis 
tration,  in  a  year  of  the  most  abundant  crops,  when  the  west  ought  to  have 
been  adding  millions  to  its  wealth,  "the  boom"  collapsed  completely,  and 
the  whole  west  was  filled  with  what  was  ungenerously  called  "the  calamity 
howl"  of  farmers  evicted  for  failing  to  meet  interest  payments  on  loans 
which  were  fairly  thrust  upon  them — sometimes  actually  by  the  agents  of 
the  companies,  and  always  by  the  conditions  which  these  companies  repre- 

sented-  333221 

As  a  result  of  such  conditions,  the  producers  of  the  west  and  south, 
began  to  turn  more  and  more  to  Mr.  Bland  for  leadership — the  more  so  as 
the  collapse  of  agricultural  values  was  accompanied  everywhere  by  a  cen 
tralization  of  manufacturing  industries,  resulting  in  a  decreased  number 
of  plants  and  too  generally  in  the  shutting  down  of  plants  in  the  west  in 
order  to  limit  the  production  of  corporate  combinations  with  headquarters 
in  New  York  and  with  speculative  stocks — "industrials" — dealt  in  as  a 
mode  of  gambling. 

After  his  defeat  by  Mr.  Harrison,  Mr.  Cleveland  denounced  such 
combinations  as  "a  commune  of  capital"  but  his  second  administration  left 
them  stronger  than  ever,  though  in  the  meantime  a  law  had  been  enacted 
giving  the  national  government  power  to  suppress  them.  The  central 
fact  of  the  relations  of  the  national  government  to  such  corporate  combina 
tion  is  that  its  power  over  them  is  never  likely  to  be  used  by  one  party  or 
the  other  except  to  intimidate  them  in  elections  and  to  force  them  to  con 
tribute  to  campaign  funds  from  which  the  friends  or  agents  of  "com- 


1 82  AN  AMERICAN  COMMONER. 

mitteemen"  who  are  appointed  solicitors  may  realize  their  percentages  or 
"commissions"  as  collectors. 

Of  such  "practical  politics,"  Bland  knew  nothing.  He  had  deliber 
ately  and  steadfastly  refused  to  learn.  Consequently  when  the  crisis 
came  and  the  opportunity  to  make  a  stand  for  the  restoration  of  constitu 
tional  government  by  "splitting"  both  the  west  and  south  was  clearly 
present,  it  was  on  Bland  that  it  was  possible  to  rely  when  no  other  man 
in  public  life  had  so  clearly  demonstrated  the  steadfastness  of  purpose  and 
the  simplicity  of  morals  necessary  for  the  success  of  so  great  an  under 
taking. 

There  was  no  miscalculation  in  regard  to  him.  From  first  to  last  he 
never  stopped  to  see  whether  he  would  gain  or  lose  by  doing  his  duty.  At 
a  time  under  the  second  Cleveland  administration  when  the  work  of  his 
life  was  at  stake — when  all  the  work  which  had  been  done  in  the  west  for 
the  restoration  of  constitutional  liberty  might  have  been  as  completely  lost 
as  was  the  work  done  in  the  fiasco  of  the  Cass  campaign,  he  stood  his 
ground  although  almost  completely  isolated  by  Mr.  Cleveland's  power  and 
skill,  until  he  had  forced  a  reluctant  party  to  take  the  risk  from  which  it 
shrank — to  make  the  advance  without  which  it  would  have  been  at  once 
disorganized. 


CHAPTER  XX. 

The  Fundamental  Reality  of  American  Politics. — International  Combinations  of 
Corporations  and  Maximum  Coercion  in  America. — The  Demand  for  Bonds  as 
a  Means  of  Endowing  Families,  Suspending  the  Natural  Laws  of  Bedistribu- 
tion  and  Creating  Hereditary  Oligarchy. — Restraint  of  Trade  by  Tariff  Laws  not 
Earnestly  Opposed  Under  the  First  Cleveland  Administration. — No  Vital  Reform 
of  Any  Kind  Possible  While  the  Electoral  College  Represented  Civil  War  Sec 
tionalism. — President  Harrison  as  a  More  Extreme  Federalist  than  Mr.  Cleve 
land. — His  Mistake  of  Judgment  in  Proposing  New  Measures  of  Coercion 
Against  Southern  Planters  WThile  Western  Farmers  Were  Using  Unmarketable 
Breadstuffs  for  Fuel.— "Cheap  Money,"  Dear  Collateral,  and  Wasted  Wealth.— 
Speculation  in  Money  at  the  Expense  of  Agricultural  Exports. — Enormous 
Interest  Rates  on  Call  Loans  During  the  "Crop  Moving  Season." — The 
"Calamity  Howl,"  Its  Causes  and  Its  Results. 


E  HAVE  seen  that  the  reality  of  American  politics  is  the 
struggle  for  the  control  of  government  as  a  means  of  control 
ling  the  products  of  labor,  either  directly  or  by  the  control  of 
the  medium  through  which  they  are  exchanged — of  money, 
however  issued. 

We  have  seen  that  under  the  Grant  administration,  an  international 
combination  of  corporations  proposed  the  maximum  of  coercion  in  using 
the  power  of  government  for  this  purpose;  that  they  did  actually  control 
politics  by  the  use  of  the  army  and  add  enormously  to  the  public  and  cor 
poration  debt  outstanding  at  interest  against  production — a  debt  which 
when  held  as  endowments  for  families  and  corporations  inevitably 
operates  to  produce  a  worse  oligarchy  than  that  of  hereditary  succession 
in  land. 

We  have  seen  a  republican  reaction  after  this  under  Hayes,  Garfield 
and  Arthur,  followed  by  the  apparent  change  involved  in  the  inauguration 
of  the  first  Cleveland  administration — a  change  conceded  by  plutocracy 
not  as  a  means  of  meeting  the  public  demands  for  radical  reform  but  of 
postponing  it  by  apparent  concession  which  would  leave  power  still  in  the 


184  AN  AMERICAN  COMMONER. 

hands  of  those  who  had  used  the  opportunities  given  them  by  civil  war 
to  usurp  it. 

The  attempts  at  tariff  reform  under  the  first  Cleveland  administra 
tion  failed  because,  on  the  part  of  many  from  the  manufacturing  states 
who  professed  to  support  them,  they  were  not  made  in  good  faith.  In 
the  Forty-eighth  Congress,  the  enacting  clause  of  the  Morrison  bill  was 
stricken  out  (in  March,  1884)  by  a  vote  which  showed  how  complete  was 
the  control  exercised  by  corporate  combination  over  the  then  existing 
machinery  of  both  parties.  In  i887,  when  the  Mills  bill  was  presented, 
President  Cleveland  had  carefully  evaded  an  issue  of  principle.  "It  is  a 
condition,  not  a  theory,  which  confronts  us,"  he  said  in  introducing  his 
argument  that  the  surplus  revenue  in  the  treasury,  rather  than  any  issue 
of  principle,  or  of  right  or  wrong,  required  reduced  taxation.  "The  ques 
tion  of  free  trade  is  absolutely  irrelevant,"  he  continued,  emphasizing  the 
point  already  made  that  he  did  not  intend  to  oppose,  per  se,  the  system  of 
restraint  of  trade  which  at  that  time  involved  the  tariff  laws,  the  internal 
revenue  system  and  the  issue  and  distribution  of  money.  Such  an  argu 
ment  at  such  a  time  could  have  only  one  logical  result — that  of  stimulating 
attempts  to  remove  the  condition  without  confronting  the  theory.  The 
surplus  was  finally  disposed  of  by  increased  appropriations  involving  the 
most  extraordinary  expenditures  for  pensions  ever  made  in  the  history 
of  politics,  ancient  or  modern.  Mr.  Cleveland  was  kept  busy  vetoing 
special  pension  bills  as  well  as  general  measures;  and  with  that  perverse 
ingenuity  which  is  so  characteristic  of  American  partisanship,  his  oppo 
nents  so  managed  it  that  not  a  few  of  the  worst  cases  of  special  legislation 
which  he  was  compelled  to  veto  involved  his  own  supporters — professional 
statesmen,  who,  seeing  the  surplus  in  process  of  distribution,  were  encour 
aged  to  remember  rheumatism,  or  other  chronic  disabilities  incident  to  the 
patriotic  self-sacrifices  of  their  youth.  When  Mr.  Cleveland  indulged 
his  sense  of  humor  at  their  expense  as  he  sometimes  did  in  flagrant  cases, 
what  came  to  be  called  the  "pretorian"  element  was  so  infuriated  that 


AN  AMERICAN  COMMONER.  185 

when  he  authorized  the  return  of  a  number  of  captured  battle  flags  to  the 
ex-Confederates  who  originally  owned  them,  the  same  men  who  had  been 
actively  engaged  in  promoting  the  exchange  backwards  and  forwards  of 
such  trophies,  turned  on  him  and  raised  such  a  teapot  tempest  of  news 
paper  protest  that  he  was  compelled  to  recede  from  his  position  of  what 
was  thus  established  as  too  much  sympathy  for  "rebellion  and  treason." 

As  nothing  was  done  under  his  administration  for  tariff  reform,  as 
his  treasury  policies  were  those  of  his  republican  predecessors,  the  "war 
feeling,"  incident  to  the  spending  of  the  surplus  in  increased  pensions  and 
other  appropriations  of  not  less  doubtful  propriety,  appeared  to  be  decisive 
in  the  campaign  of  1888,  and  under  the  mistaken  idea  that  it  had  been 
so,  President  Harrison  began  vigorously  attacking  the  southern  states  on 
the  race  issue,  as  had  been  done  under  Grant. 

It  became  clear  enough  under  the  first  Cleveland  administration  that 
no  real  reform  was  possible  in  any  direction  under  the  then  existing  align 
ment  of  the  states  in  the  electoral  college  and  in  Congress.  This  must  be 
kept  in  mind  when  there  is  a  disposition  to  hold  Mr.  Cleveland  himself 
wholly  responsible  for  the  failure  of  his  four  years'  work.  The  southern 
democrats  were  at  all  times  kept  on  the  defensive  by  assertions  that  they 
represented  "the  property  party"  at  the  south  while  professing  to  oppose 
it  at  the  north,  and  whenever  they  showed  a  disposition  to  work  for  a 
genuine  reform  of  the  enormous  abuses  of  the  corporation  system,  the 
threat  of  a  new  era  of  reconstruction,  involving  the  complete  control  of  their 
elections  through  the  use  of  federal  force  was  made  against  them  and  they 
were  "forced  back  to  their  entrenchments." 

Mr.  Harrison,  a  more  extreme  federalist  than  Mr.  Cleveland  himself, 
believed  in  a  larger  measure  of  coercion  in  government  than  the  majority 
of  Americans  at  that  time  were  willing  to  sanction.  Not  only  was  he 
ready  to  deal  with  the  labor  troubles  of  the  industrial  centers  in  a  highly 
peremptory  fashion,  but  twenty  years  after  the  close  of  the  Civil  war,  he 
proposed  against  the  south  what  would  have  been,  if  adopted,  new  meas- 


1 86  AN  AMERICAN  COMMONER. 

ures  of  violent  reconstruction. 

This  policy  was  attempted  at  a  time  when  the  economic  theories  for 
which  he  stood  were  demonstrating  their  logical  opposition  to  the  natural 
laws  of  production,  and  it  made  inevitable  such  unanswerable  sarcasm  as 
that  with  which  Kansas  farmers,  sitting  on  the  roadside  with  their  goods 
and  chattels,  after  being  evicted  by  mortgage  companies,  were  invited 
to  go  on  singing :  "John  Brown's  body  lies  mouldering  in  the  grave"  or 
"We'll  hang  Jeff  Davis  to  a  sour  apple  tree,"  while  a  new  force  bill  was 
being  enacted  against  the  impoverished  cotton  planters  of  the  south. 

The  reiteration  of  such  arguments  had  an  effect  which  was  not 
diminished  by  counter  attacks  involving  frequent  use  of  such  epithets  as 
"cranks,"  "lunatics"  and  "calamity  howlers."  The  increasing  poverty  of 
farmers,  whose  growing  crops  could  not  be  adequately  distributed  because 
of  currency  and  trade  restrictions,  was  accompanied  by  frequent  strikes 
and  labor  troubles  in  the  cities  and  by  the  growing  use  of  "Pinkertons" 
as  armed  retainers  of  corporations,  wealthy  and  unwise  enough  to  employ 
them  in  what  was  called  at  the  time  "private  war." 

These  conditions  encouraged  the  attempt  to  break  away  from  the 
restraints  of  political  conditions  surviving  from  the  Civil  war.  The 
financial  conditions  which  accompanied  this  surfeit  of  farm  products  in 
the  hands  of  the  producer  were,  to  many,  unaccountable.  Money  was 
"cheap,"  and  a  great  deal  of  newspaper  space  was  devoted  to  exhibiting 
what  was  described  as  a  decreasing  interest  rate. 

This  meant  then,  as  it  has  meant  since,  that  the  holders  of  money 
were  reducing  credits  by  demanding  increased  security.  The  man  who 
could  deposit  government  bonds,  or  something  approximating  them  in 
safety  as  an  investment,  might  get  money  at  three  or  four  per  cent.,  as 
was  loudly  alleged,  but  the  tendency  to  restrict  credit  on  real  estate 
security  after  the  collapse  of  the  western  "boom"  and  the  frequent  refusal 
to  lend  at  all  on  what  in  "flush  times"  had  been  held  as  excellent  collateral, 
brought  the  west  to  the  verge  of  hopeless  bankruptcy.  The  control  of  the 


AN  AMERICAN  COMMONER.  187 

money  supply  of  the  country,  made  possible  under  the  existing  system, 
rendered  inevitable  an  excessive  interest  rate  on  "call  loans"  and  on  other 
speculative  loans  made  in  competition  with  the  demand  for  money  to 
"move"  western  crops.  Consequently  the  speculative  markets  of  New 
York  were  kept  on  the  verge  of  panic  by  demands  for  usury  on  "doubtful" 
loans  reaching  as  high  as  two  per  cent,  a  day.  Although  this  was  simply 
highway  robbery,  it  was  asserted  over  and  over  in  the  leading  New  York 
papers — including  the  Herald,  which  can  not  be  accused  of  prejudice  in 
favor  of  calamity-howlers  or  free  silver  cranks — that  even  Mr.  Russell 
Sage  himself,  though  in  his  personal  expenditures  the  most  moderate  of 
men,  frequently  used  such  opportunities  for  "taking  all  the  traffic  would 
bear."  No  matter  who  paid  these  enormous  rates  first,  the  crops  which 
were  being  "moved"  under  the  system  of  supplanting  cash  with  banking 
credits  and  corporation  notes,  paid  it  finally. 

Hence  the  question:  "Who  Owns  the  West?"  was  decisive  against 
Mr.  Harrison.  He  was  beaten  as  no  other  candidate  had  ever  been  up  to 
that  time,  and  Mr.  Cleveland  was  re-elected,  regardless  of  what  four  years 
before  had  been  his  increasing  unpopularity. 


CHAPTER  XXL 

"The  Rainbow  Chasing  Movement"  Begins. — Its  Object  the  Restoration  of  Con 
stitutional  Government  Based  on  the  Principles  of  1788. — "Winning  Without 
New  York/'  an  Incident  of  It.— Mr.  Cleveland's  Whig  Policies  Revive  the 
"Fierce  Democracy"  of  the  Jackson  Epoch. — Revolt  Against  Wade  Hampton 
in  South  Carolina  and  Ingalls  in  Kansas. — The  Northwest  as  the  Hope  of 
America  Against  "Floaters  in  Blocks  of  Five." — Illinois  as  a  Keystone  State. — 
The  Surrender  of  the  Presidency  to  New  York  the  Only  means  of  Breaking  the 
New  York  and  Indiana  Combination. — "The  Coat  and  the  Cloak"  Both  Given 
up  Successfully  In  Practical  Politics. — Results  of  Forcing  Issues  for  Principle. — 
Henry  George  and  His  Supporters  Reinforce  Mr.  Bland  on  the  "Farm  Mortgage 
Census." — The  Issue  in  Illinois. — "Rainbow  Chasers"  Not  Prejudiced  Against 
Mr.  Cleveland  or  New  York. 

FDER  the  Harrison  administration,  it  became  evident,  that  by 
ignoring  the  struggle  for  office,  ceasing  to  consider  the  ques 
tion  of  nominating  this  candidate  or  that  for  any  office  from  the 
presidency  down,  and  forcing  issues  strongly  for  what  in  the 
discussion  of  the  federal  constitution  in  i788  had  been  asserted  as  the 
fundamental  principles  of  free  government  and  human  progress,  condi 
tions  might  be  created  under  which  it  would  become  possible  for  the 
American  people  to  decide  for  themselves — in  spite  of  the  immense  power 
of  plutocratic  combinations — whether  or  not  they  were  so  far  fitted  for 
the  forms  and  methods  of  government  they  had  inherited  as  to  wish  a 
return  to  the  realities  involved  by  them. 

The  discontent  at  the  south  with  the  policies  of  Mr.  Cleveland's  first 
administration — which  were  nothing  more  nor  less  than  the  whig  policies 
of  John  Quincy  Adams  and  Webster  in  treasury  management  and  of  Clay 
in  most  other  things — had  revived  what,  in  the  first  half  century  of  the 
government,  was  called  indifferently  "the  Fierce  Democracy/'  or  the 
"Dirty  Democracy,"  according  to  the  condition  of  alarm  or  disgust  in 

which  those  so  characterizing  it  happened  to  be.     While  the  possibility 

1 88 


AN  AMERICAN  COMMONER.  189 

of  "reviving  the  old  whig  party  at  the  south"  was  being  discussed,  the 
"old  whig  party"  with  Mr.  Cleveland  as  its  head  was  already  in  office  at 
Washington,  and  under  Mr.  Harrison  it  was  succeeded  by  the  new  feder 
alists.  There  was  no  more  of  democracy  in  Mr.  Cleveland's  administra 
tion  than  there  was  of  republicanism  in  that  of  Mr.  Harrison.  The  effects 
of  this  negation  of  principle  were  quite  evident  in  the  "off  year"  of  Mr. 
Harrison's  administration.  At  the  south  even  before  Mr.  Harrison's 
inauguration,  the  "plow-holders"  were  in  open  revolt  against  the  classes 
which  held  land  and  other  property  as  an  investment  and  lived  in  whole 
or  part  on  incomes  resulting  from  capitalization  rather  than  from  actual 
individual  industry. 

The  leaders  of  the  revolt  were  generally  ex-Confederate  soldiers — 
such  men  as  those  of  the  rank  and  file  who  had  followed  Pickett  up 
Cemetery  hill  and  planted  their  colors  on  the  heights  crowned  by  its  cap 
tured  batteries.  They  spoke  a  vernacular  English  which  made  them 
seem  absurd  when  it  was  travestied  by  their  opponents.  They  did  not 
always  shave  regularly,  and  their  manners  frequently  lacked  aristocratic 
repose.  But  they  were  not  men  who  could  be  turned  back  by  trifling 
objections  or  minor  difficulties,  and  their  unrest  represented  tremendous 
possibilities  of  change.  In  South  Carolina,  which  had  been  governed  by 
its  colonial  gentry  since  the  revolution  of  i776,  the  question  was  between 
this  uncultured  element  and  the  leadership  of  such  admirable  gentlemen 
as  Wade  Hampton — men  of  incorruptible  integrity,  of  high  capacity  for 
disinterested  virtue,  of  cultivated  intelligence  and  trained  fitness  for  gov 
erning.  And  in  Kansas,  it  was  exactly  the  same  question.  The  old 
soldiers  of  Grant  and  Sherman,  rude-looking  men  with  long  beards  and 
hard  hands,  who  had  never  heard  of  Massillon  nor  sat  at  the  feet  of 
Bourdaloue  to  study  eloquence,  were  surrounding  the  elegant  and  accom 
plished  Senator  Ingalls  demanding  in  menacing  tones  to  know  what  he 
stood  for — what  the  future  of  the  country  was  to  be — whether  mortgages, 
the  burning  of  corn  for  fuel  and  the  enforced  borrowing  of  a  national 


190  AN  AMERICAN  COMMONER. 

bank  note  currency  at  rates  as  high  as  sixteen  per  cent,  on  "drouth-belt" 
farms,  were  to  go  on  forever. 

This  made  the  opportunity  for  what  was  called  "the  rainbow  chasing 
movement." 

Its  object  was  to  obliterate  the  lines  of  civil  war  sectionalism  by 
forcing  the  northwest  to  the  front  in  national  politics,  and  vesting  it  with 
the  balance  of  power  which  had  been  held  by  the  plutocratic  element  of 
New  York  City  and  London  operating  through  the  purchase  of  "floaters 
in  blocks  of  five."  To  effect  this  it  was  necessary  to  sacrifice  the  accom 
plished  Wade  Hampton  in  South  Carolina  to  the  same  forces  which  would 
retire  the  brilliant  Ingalls  in  Kansas.  The  essential  unity  of  the  popular 
movement  in  the  south  and  in  the  west  was  fully  recognized,  and  it  was 
fully  determined  in  advance  to  make  every  possible  concession  to  it  in 
order  to  break  down  what  had  become  the  ruinous  restrictions  of  the 
"practical  politics"  of  sectionalism.  The  key  of  the  entire  situation  was 
the  political  condition  of  Illinois.  It  was  recognized  that  whatever  forcing 
of  principles  to  their  crucial  test  would  be  sufficient  to  take  that  state 
from  its  long  affiliation  with  the  republican  party  would  carry  the  north 
west  also. 

It  has  been  pointed  out  already  that  the  civilization  of  the  village 
commune  of  rural  England,  developing  towards  combination  through  the 
corporation,  and  the  related  but  seemingly  antagonistic  civilization  of  the 
farm  and  the  individualism  produced  by  it,  are  each  strongly  developed  in 
Illinois  and  present  a  plain  line  of  sectional  demarcation.  There  had  not 
been  a  time,  perhaps,  in  ten  years  when  by  forcing  an  issue  of  vital  prin 
ciples,  Illinois  might  not  have  been  carried,  but  it  had  never  been  a  part 
of  the  policies  of  interests  controlling,  to  a  large  extent  in  both  parties,  to 
allow  the  national  balance  of  power  to  be  shifted  from  New  York  City. 
When  it  became  evident  that  the  attempt  to  carry  Illinois  was  being  made, 
it  might  have  been  checked  at  once  had  not  objection  to  it  been  removed 
by  the  immediate  concession  of  the  power  to  select  presidential  candidates 


AN  AMERICAN  COMMONER.  19! 

to  the  same  element  which  had  for  so  long  exercised  it.  Mr.  Cleveland 
wrote  a  letter  defining  his  already  well-known  views  of  currency  restric 
tion,  and  had  he  been  attacked  on  it  as  he  was  attacked  by  Mr.  Bland  in 
1893,  he  could  hardly  have  controlled  a  single  western  or  southern  dele 
gation  in  the  convention  which  actually  renominated  him  by  acclamation. 
His  nomination  was  conceded,  however,  chiefly  because  it  was  clear  that 
there  was  no  effective  machinery  for  preventing  it,  but  also  with  a  full 
assurance  that  it  would  not  interrupt  the  play  of  forces  which  were  operat 
ing  to  disorganize  the  political  combinations  for  which  he  stood.  When  it 
became  evident  that  he  would  be  renominated  without  opposition  and  that 
both  national  conventions  would  nominate  "safe  men,"  all  that  remained 
to  the  practical  politics  of  corporation  feudalism  was  the  usual  trading  to 
secure  self-constituted  leaders  of  what  had  now  come  to  be  called  the 
populist  party.  Mr.  Cleveland's  supporters  at  the  south  made  strenuous 
attempts  to  drive  back  the  revolted  element  but  they  were  worsted.  In 
Tennessee  and  South  Carolina — the  one  as  naturally  a  democratic  state  as 
the  other  was  naturally  aristocratic — the  "new  issue  men"  carried  every 
thing  before  them  as  they  did  in  the  northwest.  In  Missouri  they  were 
held  to  their  allegiance  to  the  democratic  party  chiefly  by  the  fact  that 
much  of  the  work  to  carry  Illinois,  Kansas  and  the  northwest  was  done 
through  the  St.  Louis  press.  The  idea  that  the  maximum  of  coercion  is 
necessary  and  beneficial  in  government  had  manifested  itself  everywhere 
as  an  inherent  part  of  the  federalism  for  which  Mr.  Harrison  stood.  In 
Illinois  it  showed  itself  not  only  in  the  presence  of  Pinkertons,  supplanting 
the  functions  of  the  sheriff,  but  in  an  attempt  to  close  Lutheran  and 
Catholic  parochial  schools,  because  of  their  refusal  to  admit  the  justice  of 
state  regulation  of  their  religious  and  literary  curriculum.  An  examina 
tion  of  the  United  States  census  showed  that  on  this  issue  alone,  the  advo 
cates  of  coercive  government  might  be  defeated  in  Illinois  by  a  sufficiently 
vigorous  attack.  As  a  matter  of  fact,  both  in  Illinois  and  Wisconsin, 
where  a  similar  law  against  private  schools  had  been  enacted,  the  latent 


192  AN  AMERICAN  COMMONER. 

discontent  with  the  injustice  of  the  whole  system  of  political,  economic 
and  social  restriction  and  repression  was  so  great  that  Wisconsin — a  state 
which  was  not  considered  at  all  in  initial  calculations — was  actually  car 
ried  by  the  same  contest  which  carried  Illinois,  though  that  fight  was  made 
chiefly  from  St.  Louis  and  apparently  at  too  long  a  range  to  be  at  all 
effective.  So  far-reaching  is  the  inevitable  result  of  a  determined  asser 
tion  of  these  fundamental  principles  through  which  the  constructive  forces 
of  the  human  intellect  are  given  freedom  of  action  and  rendered  efficient. 

Whenever  an  issue  of  radical  principle  is  made,  advocates  of  the  most 
widely  divergent  methods  are  united.  Thus,  Mr.  Bland  had  no  special 
confidence  in  the  land  theory  of  Henry  George  as  a  means  of  "abolishing 
poverty,"  and  Mr.  George  was  inclined  to  be  impatient  with  bimetallism 
or  any  other  issue  which  prevented  a  fuller  discussion  of  his  land  theory. 
But  in  fundamental  economic  principle,  Mr.  Bland  and  Mr.  George 
united — each  holding  direct  production  from  the  soil  of  paramount 
economic  importance.  In  the  east,  Mr.  George,  by  his  advocacy  of  free 
trade,  had  done  more  to  break  down  civil  war  sectionalism  than  had  been 
done  by  any  one  else  in  that  section.  When  Mr.  Eland's  work  forced  the 
issues  against  the  eviction  at  wholesale  of  the  mortgaged  farmers  of  the 
west,  it  was  the  followers  of  Henry  George  who  worked  incessantly  and 
strenuously  until  they  had  compelled  the  passage  of  the  law  for  making  a 
census  of  farm  mortgages.  Again,  in  a  few  months  after  the  ex-Confed 
erates  of  South  Carolina  and  the  ex-Federals  of  Kansas  had  been  denounc 
ing  each  other  with  a  fierceness  born  of  the  force  of  long-standing  habit, 
the  power  of  new  convictions,  excited  in  them  by  the  appeal  to  fundamental 
principle,  had  united  them  for  a  common  purpose  and  made  them  efficient 
for  its  achievement.  Seldom  in  the  history  of  politics  anywhere  has  there 
been  a  more  remarkable  or  more  encouraging  spectacle  than  the  readiness 
with  which,  over  a  vast  territory,  divided  by  seemingly  impassable  barriers 
of  natural  causes  and  artificial  prejudice,  men  of  the  most  diverse  views 
and  antagonistic  habits  rallied  for  a  common  purpose  and  advanced 


A  BLAND  BADGE  OF  THE  CAMPAIGN 
OF  1890. 


MR.  BLAND'S  LAW  OFFICE  AT  ROLLA,    MO. 


AN  AMERICAN  COMMONER.  193 

irresistibly  to  carry  it  out. 

This  was  the  "rainbow  chasing  movement"  which  grew  out  of  Eland's 
work  in  Missouri.  It  is  true  that  at  the  front  of  it  was  a  false  pretense — 
that  if  Mr.  Cleveland,  whom  every  student  of  politics  knew  to  be  a  repre 
sentative  of  antagonism  to  all  it  stood  for,  had  not  been  forced  forward  as 
its  beneficiary,  it  might  not  have  been  possible  at  all.  But  it  was  not  the 
less  remarkable,  but  rather  the  more  so,  on  that  account.  When  every 
thing  that  can  be  taken  away  from  men  of  trained  intelligence  who  devote 
it — as  Mr.  Bland  did  his — to  serving  mankind,  has  been  taken,  it  leaves 
their  power  greater  than  ever  by  forcing  the  quicker  development  of  the 
hidden  realities  of  politics  and  by  giving  the  advocates  of  repression  and 
restriction  full  opportunity  to  develop  their  logic  to  its  necessary  reductio 
ad  absurdum. 

To  carry  a  presidential  election  without  New  York  and  Indiana,  to 
break  down  the  sectionalism  of  civil  war,  to  break  the  solid  west  and 
"split"  the  solid  south  so  that  the  purchase  of  "floaters  in  blocks  of  five" 
in  a  dozen  wards  and  counties  could  no  longer  control  60,000,000  people — 
that  was  the  purpose  of  the  "rainbow-chasing  campaign,"  and  "rainbow 
chasers,"  who  knew  Mr.  Cleveland  as  a  representative  man  and  had  no 
prejudice  against  him  personally  because  of  what  he  represented,  accepted 
him  as  inevitable  and  began  preparing  for  the  issue  which  was  unavoidable 
as  a  result  of  his  election.  That  issue  Mr.  Bland  met  with  moral  courage 
which  has  seldom  been  equalled — courage  for  which  the  twentieth  cen 
tury  owes  him  more  than  it  owes  any  other  man  in  the  public  life  of  his 
generation. 


CHAPTER  XXII. 

Mr.  Cleveland's  Second  Term. — His  Attempt  to  "Restore  the  Hegemony  of  New 
York"  Forces  His  Party  to  Repudiate  Him.— He  Defeats  Tariff  Reform  by 
Supplanting  it  With  a  Manufactured  Issue  Against  Bimetallic  Coinage. — Mr. 
Cleveland's  Thoroughgoing  Whiggery  and  His  Dislike  of  the  Vulgus. — He 
Attempts  to  Isolate  Mr.  Bland  in  Missouri. — How  a  National  Combination  Was 
Broken  by  the  Assault  of  a  Single  Newspaper. — Mr.  Bland  Boomed  for  Presi 
dent  in  Missouri. — Mr.  Cleveland's  Missouri  Supporters  in  Congress  Driven  to 
Cover. — Bland  Defeats  the  Gates  Bankruptcy  Bill. — The  Real  Meaning  of 
"Tariff  Reform"  as  Mr.  Cleveland  Represented  It. — He  and  His  Friends 
Dictate  the  Protectionist  Plank  in  the  Report  of  the  Platform  Committee  at 
Chicago  in  1892. — It  is  Rejected  by  the  Convention. — The  Standard  Oil  Com 
pany,  the  Sugar  Trust  and  the  Banks  as  a  Political  Combination. — Federalism 
and  the  Illinois  Strike. 

JR.  CLEVELAND  was  no  sooner  inaugurated  for  his  second 
term  than,  with  his  usual  courage  and  determination,  he  pro 
ceeded  to  force  on  his  party  as  its  only  hope  of  escaping  com 
plete  and  immediate  ruin,  a  repudiation  of  his  policies  and  a 
radical  stand  against  all  that  with  which,  in  the  public  mind,  he  was  most 
completely  identified. 

In  1862,  Daniel  W.  Voorhees,  and  other  representatives  of  the  "cop 
perhead  element"  in  the  central  west,  began  vigorous  attacks  on  the  dis 
criminations  of  the  Morrill  tariff,  hoping  to  check  abuses  in  the  use  of  the 
taxing  power  for  war  purposes.  They  so  far  succeeded  in  centering  pub 
lic  attention  on  the  subject  that  in  the  midst  of  the  confusion  of  civil  war 
and  the  period  of  anarchy  which  followed  it,  the  feeling  of  opposition  to 
the  restrictive  economic  policies  of  the  republican  party  kept  the  demo 
cratic  party  alive  and  growing  in  spite  of  a  position  which  was  logically 
untenable — a  position  which  in  1866  required  it  to  represent  both  the  con 
servatism  of  the  landed  interests  of  the  south  and  the  radicalism  of  the 
"proletarian"  masses  in  New  York  and  other  northern  cities. 

A  thoroughgoing  whig,  with  all  the  prejudices  of  the  "gentleman's 

194 


AN  AMERICAN  COMMONER.  195 

party"  against  the  "vulgus"  of  his  own  state,  Mr.  Cleveland  squared  issues 
against  himself  by  forcing  an  issue  for  the  restrictive  control  of  the  cur 
rency  into  precedence  of  the  issue  against  restrictive  tariff  taxation  on 
which  he  had  been  elected. 

The  false  pretenses  of  the  campaign  which  elected  him  were  not  his. 
He  had  announced  his  position  against  bimetallic  coinage,  and  having 
been  elected  in  spite  of  it,  he  felt  free  to  follow  the  dictates  of  his  own 
sense  of  duty.  He  did  so  accordingly — with  far  reaching  results,  which 
had  been  by  no  means  unanticipated  by  those  who  believed  that  the  future 
of  the  country  would  be  worked  out  by  the  development  of  its  constructive 
forces,  operating  in  spite  of  any  and  all  attempts  at  checking  them. 

In  issuing  what  has  been  called  his  "panic  proclamation"  against 
silver,  Mr.  Cleveland  was  logical  and  strictly  consistent  with  his  own 
record.  He  looked  on  control  of  the  currency  by  national  bankers  as 
desirable,  and  he  had  no  confidence  in  the  ability  of  the  "inexperienced 
masses"  to  manage  the  finances  of  the  government.  It  is  not  likely  that  it 
occurred  to  him  to  apply  the  same  argument  against  allowing  the  inex 
perienced  masses  to  have  anything  at  all  to  do  with  government,  but  his 
sympathies  inclined  him  at  all  points  to  a  government  of  experts  and  of 
the  "fit,"  selected,  not  because  they  represented  the  rest,  but  because  of 
demonstrated  superiority  manifested  in  ability  to  govern  rather  than  to 
represent  others.  This  is  merely  saying  once  more  that  Mr.  Cleveland 
believed  in  a  government  "by  the  better  element,"  and  being  firmly  con 
vinced  that  the  national  banks  and  other  "business  interests,"  represented 
in  his  first  cabinet  by  such  able  men  as  Daniel  Manning  and  William  C. 
Whitney,  were  the  better  element,  he  adopted  their  views  as  his  own  and 
supplanted  the  tariff  issue  with  an  issue  against  silver  coinage  and  an 
automatic  currency. 

It  has  been  said  that  as  a  result  of  the  anomalous  division  forced  by 
the  "free  soil"  contest,  a  reform  of  the  tariff  was  logically  impossible 
during  the  twenty-five  years  which  followed  the  Civil  war.  But  had  Mr. 


196  AN  AMERICAN   COMMONER. 

Cleveland  forced  the  issue  for  tariff  reform  as  he  did  the  issue  against 
bimetallism,  he  would  have  ranked  still  as  one  of  the  greatest  and  most 
popular  leaders  of  his  party.  As  he  did  not — as  in  the  nature  of  things 
he  could  not — his  administration  made  a  failure  to  reform  the  tariff,  so 
complete,  so  humiliating,  so  manifestly  ludicrous  from  every  possible 
standpoint  at  which  it  could  be  looked,  that  it  would  have  been  suicide 
to  discuss  the  tariff  and  tariff  reform  at  all  in  the  ensuing  national  cam 
paign.  The  democratic  party  had  only  one  hope  of  survival — that  of 
forcing  radically  the  only  other  issue  with  the  republican  party  which 
remained — that  of  bimetallism — the  free  and  unlimited  coinage  of  silver 
at  the  ratio  of  16  to  i. 

So  obvious  was  this  necessity — so  clear  was  it  even  to  men  who  had 
united  with  Mr.  Cleveland  in  attempting  to  keep  Mr.  Bland  in  the  back 
ground — that  Mr.  Cleveland,  who,  at  the  outset  of  the  struggle  under  his 
second  administration,  had  complete  control  of  the  democratic  party 
machinery,  with  only  Bland  and  Eland's  immediate  following  holding  out 
against  him — found  his  influence  nullified  and  his  administration  openly 
repudiated. 

It  was  the  logic  of  the  situation  that  it  should  be  so.  Nothing  could 
have  prevented  it,  or  it  would  have  been  prevented  at  the  start.  Between 
the  defeat  of  Harrison  and  Mr.  Cleveland's  second  inauguration,  careful 
preparations  had  been  made  for  the  work  Mr.  Cleveland  was  to  do.  Lead 
ing  newspapers  had  been  prepared  for  it  by  systematic  pressure  from 
national  bankers  and  advertisers  influenced  by  national  bankers.  It  was 
believed  when  the  Cleveland  administration  revealed  its  policies,  that  Mr. 
Bland  would  have  practically  no  support,  even  in  Missouri  where  a  strong 
combination  had  been  made  against  him,  consisting  of  members  of  the 
congressional  delegation  and  others,  some  of  whom  professed  habitually 
the  highest  reverence  for  him  and  made  compliments  to  his  "sincerity" 
and  "earnestness,"  part  of  their  stock  in  trade  before  Missouri  audiences. 
No  advocate  of  16  to  i  coinage  had  reason  to  expect  control  of  Mr. 


AN  AMERICAN  COMMONER.  197 

Cleveland's  postoffices  or  other  patronage,  and  as  a  result,  Mr.  Bland 
seemed  to  be  completely  isolated  when  Mr.  Cleveland  began  the  fight  for 
demonetization. 

Mr.  Bland  at  this  time  v/as  in  doubt  whether  it  would  be  possible  to 
make  the  contest  for  bimetallism,  or  any  other  reform,  within  the  lines  of 
the  democratic  party  as  its  organization  then  existed.  He  was  ready  to 
leave  the  party  if  necessary.*  In  the  meantime,  almost  wholly  without  sup 
port,  he  began  the  struggle  which  prevented  the  party  from  being  com 
pletely  disorganized.  He  was  supported  in  Missouri  from  an  unexpected 
quarter.  The  St.  Louis  Chronicle,  at  that  time  edited  by  Gen.  Mor 
ton  L.  H:.wkins,  saw  in  the  situation  an  opportunity  for  journalism  of  the 
highest  type  and  began  vigorously  "booming"  Mr.  Bland  for  president  in 
connection  with  a  strong  attack  made  on  those  members  of  the  Missouri 
delegation  who  had  either  secretly  adopted  Mr.  Cleveland's  views  or  had 
assented  to  them  as  the  inevitable.  A  circular  letter  was  sent  out  by  Gen 
eral  Hawkins  to  the  democratic  weekly  newspapers  of  Missouri,  Illinois 
and  other  states,  asking  their  opinion  of  the  policy  which  was  about  to  be 
adopted  by  the  administration.  The  replies  were  immediate  and  were 
virtually  if  not  wholly  unanimous  in  their  indignant  condemnation.  As 
one  broadside  after  another  of  these  letters  was  printed,  Washington  in 
general,  and  the  Senate  and  House  of  Representatives  in  particular,  re- 

*"Nothing  short  of  revolution  it  seems  to  me  can  save  the  cause,"  Mr.  Bland  wrote  in  1894  to  the  ed 
itor  of  this  volume.  His  view  of  party  allegiance  in  general  was  given  as  follows  in  a  letter  to  Virgil 
Salmon,  Mercer  University,  Macon,  Georgia: 

"Feb.  5,  1898. 

"The  question  of  whether  party  action  is  better  in  politics  than  independent  action  must  be  con 
sidered  from  the  standpoint  of  a  government  resting  upon  the  will  of  the  people.  Parties  seem  to  be 
indispensable,  at  least  unavoidable,  in  the  conduct  of  a  republican  form  of  government  such  as  ours. 
Political  parties  are  supposed  to  represent  certain  principles  of  government  supposed  to  be  necessary  to 
its  proper  administration.  On  these  questions  people  will  naturally  divide.  I  have  not  the  time  to 
present  the  great  principles  on  which  political  parties  have  heretofore  divided,  or  on  which  they  are  now 
divided,  but  suffice  it  to  say  that  inasmuch  as  parties  seem  to  be  indispensable  to  our  government, 
therefore  party  allegiance  is  preferable  to  independent  action,  for  principles  cannot  be  enforced  without 
party  discipline  and  party  allegiance;  yet,  I  would  not  be  understood  to  mean  by  this  that,  when  a 
political  party  becomes  the  mere  tool  of  designing  persons  for  the  conduct  of  a  government  used  to 
benefit  the  few  at  the  expense  of  the  many,  allegiance  is  owed  it,  but  rather  in  this  case  the  party  has 
forfeited  its  claims  upon  voters,  and  thus  independent  action  is  not  only  preferable  but  absolutely 
necessary." 


198  AN  AMERICAN  COMMONER. 

ceived  the  full  benefit  of  special  editions  of  the  paper.  It  soon  became 
apparent  that  the  combination  against  Mr.  Bland  could  be  broken  with 
ease  as  far  as  the  west  and  south  were  concerned,  and  the  attack  on  it  was 
made  with  persistent  determination. 

Mr.  Bland,  instead  of  being  isolated  as  it  had  been  hoped  by  his  oppo 
nents,  found  himself  supported  by  the  entire  democratic  press  of  the  west 
and  south,  except  by  a  few  city  papers  representing  special  interests. 
Those  who  expected  to  control  him  through  his  disinterestedness  and  his 
unwillingness  to  assert  claims  for  leadership,  found  that  they  had  com 
pletely  lost  their  influence  with  him.  He  demonstrated  his  natural  super 
iority  to  the  merely  "practical"  politician  around  him,  and  in  a  few 
weeks  he  had  proven  his  ability  to  lead  in  spite  of  them.  A  signal  instance 
of  it  was  given  during  this  period,  in  the  ease  with  which  he  forced  the 
defeat  of  the  national  bankruptcy  bill,  which  was  then  held  ready  for  pass 
age,  backed  by  the  banks  and  boards  of  trade  of  the  country  and  supple 
mented  with  a  clause  under  which  debtors  on  a  mere  affidavit  of  "knowl 
edge  and  belief"  could  be  imprisoned  and  held  until  bailed.  The  Chronicle 
opened  the  fight  upon  this  bill  with  such  vigor  in  St.  Louis  that  Congress 
man  Gates  of  Alabama  who  was  then  in  charge  of  the  bill  was  reported 
in 4  Washington  dispatches  as  having  threatened  General  Hawkins.  No 
doubt  this  was  an  exaggeration,  but  there  was  no  possibility  of  exaggerat 
ing  the  radicalism  of  the  element  which  Mr.  Oates  had  been  put  forward  to 
represent.  The  bill,  in  spite  of  its  imprisonment  clause,  was  forced  for 
passage  and  it  would  have  passed  had  not  Mr.  Bland  taken  the  offensive 
against  it  and  moved  to  strike  out  its  enacting  clause.  Its  friends  were 
thrown  into  confusion  and,  as  some  on  the  democratic  side  who  would 
have  supported  it  otherwise  did  not  have  the  courage  to  do  so,  it  was 
defeated. 

On  the  issue  against  the  coinage  of  silver,  Mr.  Bland,  though  he 
seemed  to  be  defeated,  won  with  the  same  ease  an  overwhelming  victory 
for  principle.  When  his  work  culminated  in  the  great  "parting  of  the 


AN  AMERICAN  COMMONER.  199 

ways"  speech  which  defined  the  issues  of  1896,  public  sentiment  in  Mis 
souri  and  the  west  had  become  so  manifest  and  so  menacing  that  those 
who  had  joined  with  Mr.  Cleveland,  in  the  attempt  to  "swing  the  party," 
were  obliged  to  vote  with  Mr.  Bland  in  order  to  keep  standing  room  in 
Congress  as  representatives  of  western  and  southern  constituencies. 

After  Mr.  Cleveland  succeeded  in  compelling  the  suspension  of  silver 
coinage  under  the  Sherman  act,  Mr.  Bland  forced  him  to  veto  a  bill  for  the 
coinage  of  the  "seigniorage,"  and  by  refusal  to  concede  anything  to  the 
policies  the  administration  represented,  brought  about  a  more  definite 
public  understanding  of  what  they  really  were. 

The  end  contemplated  by  these  policies  was  to  force  the  business  of  the 
country  as  far  as  possible  away  from  a  cash  basis,  in  order  that  the  maxi 
mum  amount  of  "banking  credits"  might  be  utilized.  It  was  proposed  to 
back  the  credit  of  the  banks  with  that  of  the  United  States,  and  to  this  end 
an  elaborate  system  was  devised  under  the  auspices  of  Mr.  Carlisle.  It  can 
be  characterized  without  prejudice  as  tending  to  exaggerate  every  evil  of 
the  national  banking  system,  by  adding  the  element  of  the  worst  speculative 
insecurity  to  that  of  monopoly,  through  the  employment  of  the  delegated 
sovereignty  of  the  government.  This  had  been  anticipated  in  the  demo 
cratic  platform  of  1892,  where  Mr.  Cleveland's  financial  associates  man 
aged  to  secure  complete  control  of  the  platform  committee. 

In  the  national  convention  held  at  Chicago  in  that  year,  the  results  of 
the  second  Cleveland  administration  were  clearly  foreshadowed.  Mr. 
Cleveland's  whig  and  federalist  friends,  controlling  the  platform  com 
mittee,  rejected  a  democratic  plank  written  in  Missouri  committing  the 
party  squarely  to  its  historic  principles  of  "tariff  for  revenue  only,"  and 
substituted  for  it  the  compromise  idea  for  which  Mr.  Cleveland  had  always 
stood — the  idea  of  a  tariff  high  enough  to  protect  the  manufacturer  -and  to 
yield  revenue  in  the  absence  of  all  protection  for  raw  materials  produced  in 
America.  It  does  Mr.  Cleveland  no  injustice  to  say  that  the  Standard  Oil 
Company  and  the  combined  national  banking  interest  of  the  country  were 


200  AN  AMERICAN  COMMONER. 

represented  by  those  who  represented  him  most  authoritatively  in  that 
convention.  The  policy  of  the  platform  committee,  so  far  as  it  related  to 
the  tariff,  was  repudiated  in  open  convention,  and  a  plank  almost  exactly 
identical  in  phraseology  with  that  from  Missouri,  which  had  been  rejected, 
was  adopted  by  the  convention. 

The  convention,  however,  paid  no  attention  to  an  inconspicuous  clause 
under  which  it  was  proposed  to  revive  "state  banks"  as  banks  of  issue, 
with  a  national  guarantee  of  their  currency.  As  it  presently  appeared, 
this  looked  to  be  the  issuance  of  corporation  notes  to  circulate  as  money  on 
the  "security"  of  the  bonded  debt  of  other  corporations — even  of  railroads 
representing  values  largely  speculative.  This  was  said  to  be  a  plan  for 
"retiring  the  treasury  from  the  banking  business" — meaning  that  with  a 
minimum  coinage  by  the  treasury,  the  rest  of  the  currency  needed  in  busi 
ness  was  to  be  issued  chiefly  on  government  credit  by  private  corporations, 
putting  it  in  circulation  at  interest  to  be  collected  and  appropriated  by 
their  managers.  Under  this  plan — as  indeed  under  the  national  banking 
system — a  dollar  of  bonded  debt,  outstanding  against  business,  is  inflated 
one  hundred  per  cent,  by  a  note  for  a  dollar  "based"  on  it  and  put  in  circula 
tion  to  do  the  work  of  cash.  The  system  was  invented  by  the  celebrated 
John  Law,  and  no  rational  intellect  which  consents  to  consider  its  realities, 
can  conclude  that  it  is  logical,  scientific  or  indeed  sane,  except  as  claims 
of  sanity  may  be  made  for  it  because  of  the  facility  it  gives  for  the  acquisi 
tion  of  unearned  wealth  at  the  expense  of  natural  production  and  distri 
bution. 

Along  this  line  of  monopoly  control  of  the  currency  by  corporations 
substituting  inflated  paper  for  cash,  issues  were  forced  in  connection  with 
a  tariff  bill  which,  in  spite  of  the  national  platform  of  1892,  recurred  to  the 
whig  basis  proposed  by  Mr.  W.  C.  Whitney  from  the  platform  committee 
at  Chicago.  In  many  cases,  the  Wilson  bill,  by  absolute  free  trade  in  raw 
materials  and  a  duty  of  over  a  third  against  imports  of  manufactured 
goods,  made  the  protective  difference  greater  for  the  American  manu- 


AN  AMERICAN  COMMONER.  2OI 

facturer  than  it  had  been  before.  It  was  asserted  at  the  time,  with  a  show 
of  probability,  that  the  average  duties  of  the  bill  were  on  the  whole  higher 
than  those  of  the  "war  tariff"  which  the  democratic  party  had  been 
denouncing  for  so  many  years.  The  tax  on  incomes,  as  it  manifestly 
tends  to  restrict  investment  and  to  minimize  production,  was  in  opposition 
to  the  free  trade  theory  of  the  least  possible  restriction,  but,  nevertheless, 
it  was  the  most  popular  feature  of  the  bill  and  when,  as  was  perhaps 
anticipated,  the  Supreme  Court  declared  against  it,  the  bill  as  it  had 
passed  was  left  so  odious  with  both  parties,  that  democrats  mentioned  it 
only  with  shame  and  republicans  with  execration — the  more  violent  be 
cause  it  was  only  thus  that  they  could  make  or  simulate  a  decided  diver 
gence  from  Mr.  Cleveland's  now  pronounced  federalism. 

There  is  little  question  that  his  second  administration  did  more  to 
break  down  popular  adherence  to  the  original  principles  of  the  government 
than  that  of  General  Grant  himself.  Mr.  Cleveland  had  most  of  the  good 
qualities  of  John  Adams  and  differed  politically  in  no  essential  respect 
from  Adams  in  his  tendencies  and  sympathies.  Although  Illinois  had 
been  carried  against  the  republicans  in  1892,  largely  on  the  merits  of  the 
determined  attempt  made  to  restrict  the  tendency  of  commercial  corpora 
tions  to  use  force  as  a  business  method ;  although  General  John  M.  Palmer, 
the  quondam  opponent  of  General  Sheridan,  had  been  selected  and  forced 
to  the  front  in  Illinois  to  represent  opposition  to  the  Pinkerton  system  and 
to  the  unnecessary  intervention  of  the  military  in  civil  government,  Mr. 
Cleveland  during  the  Pullman  strike  sent  federal  troops  into  Illinois  to  do 
police  duty,  not  only  without  the  call  of  the  governor,  but  against  his 
wishes.  It  is  useless  to  discuss  the  occasion  for  this,  here.  It  needs  to  be 
considered  only  as  a  fact,  unprecedented  in  the  history  of  the  democratic 
party,  and  in  its  effects  on  democratic  organization,  necessarily  revolution 
ary.  Mr.  Bland  opposed  it  in  Congress,  but  he  was  unable  to  do  more 
than  put  his  protest  on  record — Congress  being  controlled  at  the  time  by  a 
combination  between  republicans  and  those  who  were  known  as  "cuckoos" 


202  AN  AMERICAN  COMMONER. 

— a  name  given  to  them  to  suggest  the  promptness  and  reliability  with 
which  the  cuckoo  in  a  well  made  clock  responds  in  voice  and  action  to  the 
movements  of  the  governing  machinery. 

When  a  president  elected  as  a  democrat,  and  the  first  to  be  seated  as 
a  democrat  since  the  Civil  war,  thus  openly  repudiated  the  theories  of  the 
federal  constitution  to  which  the  democratic  party  owed  its  first  great  vic 
tory  against  Adams  in  1800;  for  which  southern  Confederates  had  fought 
four  years  and  northern  "copperheads"  endured  persecution  and  igno 
miny  for  a  full  generation,  it  was  evident  that  a  new  era  had  come  indeed. 
Unyielding  in  his  conviction  of  duty,  devoted  to  the  welfare  of  the  country 
as  he  understood  it,  and  governed  as  were  his  intimate  associates  by  a  pro 
found  distrust  of  the  masses  of  the  people,  Mr.  Cleveland's  patriotism  and 
willingness  to  sacrifice  the  last  remnants  of  his  personal  popularity  to  what 
he  conceived  to  be  the  necessity  of  leading  the  democratic  party  in  new 
directions,  worked  to  make  inevitable  such  a  radical  change  in  politics  as 
had  hardly  been  seen  since  similar  issues  were  forced  by  the  elder  Adams. 

Among  the  federalist  presidents  of  the  United  States,  Mr.  Cleveland 
will  rank  with  Adams  in  ability  and  in  patriotism,  but  no  matter  how  wil 
ling  we  may  be  to  do  him  full  justice,  it  is  impossible  to  escape  the  conclu 
sion  that  except  as  it  disorganized  sectional  politics  and  forced  party 
re-alignment,  his  second  administration  was  one  of  the  most  unfortunate 
in  the  history  of  the  country. 

His  attempt  at  tariff  reform  was  worse  than  a  failure.  His  sale  of 
bonds  to  maintain  the  gold  basis  had  the  effect  of  making  gold  itself  a  part 
of  an  unsafe  system  of  credit  currency,  for  if  government  credit  utilized 
in  the  issue  of  bonds  must  be  used  to  support  gold  as  the  standard,  it  is 
clear  that  in  economic  effect  gold  is  no  longer  cash  (money  of  final 
account),  but  is  as  much  a  part  of  a  general  system  of  credit  currency  as 
if  it  were  paper  promise  to  pay,  unsecured.  Every  million  dollars  in  gold, 
held  in  reserve  by  Mr.  Cleveland  through  an  issue  of  bonds  against  it  to 
keep  it  in  reserve,  was  inflated  by  the  amount  of  the  bonds  issued.  And 


AN  AMERICAN  COMMONER.  203 

when  to  this  unscientific  and  unnatural  system,  was  added  the  resort  to 
such  foreign  financial  agents  as  Mr.  Pierpont  Morgan  and  the  Rothschilds 
to  "underwrite  the  treasury"  and  support  the  credit  of  the  country  in  a  time 
of  profound  peace,  nothing  except  the  use  of  the  army  for  police  duty  in 
Illinois  was  needed  to  divide  Mr.  Cleveland  forever  from  what  its  oppo 
nents  call  the  "bourbon"  element  of  his  party.  Sixteen  to  one  bimetallism 
and  the  work  of  Mr.  Bland  made  the  issue  when  the  crisis  came,  but  long 
before  it  came,  Cleveland  himself  had  made  it  through  his  funda 
mental  federalism — his  innate  belief  in  the  necessity  of  government  of,  by 
and  for  "the  better  element." 


CHAPTER  XXIII. 

The  Financial  Policies  of  Plutocracy  and  John  Law  as  Their  Prophet. — Turgot  and 
Quesnay  as  Representatives  of  Sanity  and  the  Principles  of  Progress. — Mr. 
Eland's  Work  Justified  by  the  Strictest  Standard  of  Turgot.— "Hands  Off!  Let 
the  World  Move!" — The  Bankers'  Panic  and  Its  Causes. — The  Tendency  to 
Maximum  Production  as  a  Law  of  Nature  and  the  Fact  of  Minimum  Distribu 
tion  as  a  Result  of  Plutocratic  Oligarchy. —  Political  Economy  in  Its  Last 
Analysis. — Vest  on  the  Sherman  Anti-Trust  Law  as  Humbug. — "Frying  Out 
the  Fat"  of  Lawbreaking  Combinations. — Trusts  in  no  Danger  From  the 
Collectors  of  Campaign  Funds. — Mills  and  Factories  Closed  by  Restriction  and 
Under-Distribution. — Necessary  Collapse  of  Restrictive  Systems  in  the  Pres 
ence  of  Natural  Maximum  Production. 


HE  POSITION  taken  by  Mr.  Bland  against  the  Carlisle 
scheme  of  credit  currency  was  strictly  in  line  with  the  best 
traditions  of  economic  science.  Those  who  will  consult 
Turgot's  "Letter  on  Paper  Money,"  addressed  to  the  Abbe 
de  Cice  against  John  Law's  theory  of  substituting  for  cash,  bank  paper 
issued  under  government  privilege,  will  find  that  the  issues  of  the  last 
twenty-five  years  of  the  nineteenth  century  are  not  new.  When  Quesnay 
and  Turgot  attacked  land  feudalism  in  France,  the  same  principles  were 
involved  which  came  to  issue  when  Mr.  Bland  attacked  the  abuses  of  the 
analogous  corporation  feudalism  in  America. 

In  France  the  great  feudal  interests  demanded  toll  of  production  and 
distribution  without  which  they  refused  to  allow  the  progress  of  the  world. 
Laissez  faire,  laissez  passer!" — "Hands  off!  Let  the  world  move!" — 
that  was  the  rallying  cry  of  the  "Physiocrats,"  led  by  Quesnay,  Turgot 
and  the  elder  Mirabeau,  teachers  of  Jefferson  and  Samuel  Adams  in 
America ! 

Their  work  made  possible  the  immense  development  of  the  nineteenth 
century  in  America  and  at  the  end  of  the  century,  Bland  stood  as  a  repre 
sentative  of  the  right  of  the  twentieth  to  the  same  development.  "Hands 

204 


AN  AMERICAN  COMMONER.  205 

off !  Let  the  world  move !" — that  was  his  message  also  to  the  men  with 
muck  rakes  who  search  in  the  filth  which  fertilizes  civilization,  for  that 
which  satisfies  them  if  it  is  found — who  if  their  search  be  interrupted, 
throng  with  strident  cries  to  threaten  progress  and  to  mob  its  prophets! 

In  demanding  a  bimetallic  currency,  issued  and  put  in  circulation  by 
the  government  without  a  delegation  of  its  sovereignty  to  corporations, 
Mr.  Bland  stood  for  the  least  possible  restriction  of  production  and  distri 
bution,  just  as  he  did  in  opposing  prohibitive  duties  against  imports. 

The  issue  was,  and  it  still  remains,  clearly  defined  between  minimum 
and  maximum  restriction  of  production  and  distribution.  Mr.  Bland  stood 
at  all  times  for  the  minimum  of  restriction.  He  never  changed  his  position 
or  compromised  it  during  his  public  life.  Under  Grant,  Hayes,  Garfield 
and  Arthur,  under  Cleveland,  Harrison  and  McKinley  he  opposed  a  credit 
currency  of  corporation  paper  because  it  represented  the  maximum  of 
interference  with  free  exchange  of  the  products  of  labor — of  the  necessaries 
and  comforts  of  life.  The  issue  was  never  between  the  dollar  of  gold  and 
the  dollar  of  silver,  but  between  a  dollar  in  cash  representing  a  settling 
power  of  100  per  cent,  plus,  and  a  credit  dollar  of  corporation  paper  issued 
on  government  guaranty,  representing  100  per  cent,  minus — an  inflation 
of  100  per  cent,  of  its  face  as  an  addition  to  the  floating  debt  outstanding 
against  business,  and  operating  in  the  direct  ratio  of  its  volume  to  force 
collapse  and  panic. 

So  clear  is  Mr.  Bland  in  his  intellectual  as  in  his  moral  rectitude, 
that  among  all  his  opponents,  there  has  never  yet  been  one  to  meet  him  on 
the  real  issue — between  the  high,  constructive  principles  of  Turgot  and 
those  of  Bourbon  despotism  and  folly  in  France — of  plutocratic  despotism 
and  folly  in  America. 

The  disciples  of  John  Law  in  America,  organized  as  speculative  bank 
ing  corporations,  have  done  all  that  perverse  ingenuity  supported  by  limit 
less  means  can  do  to  discredit  the  great  truths  of  progress  which  inspired 
Mr.  Eland's  work,  but  they  are  so  far  from  having  silenced  him  that  in 


206  AN  AMERICAN   COMMONER. 

the  first  ten  years  of  the  twentieth  century — even  if  they  make  an  armed 
camp  of  the  world  and  of  America  with  it,  they  will  still  hear  more  insist 
ently  than  ever  the  message  of  his  work,  the  moral  of  his  life — "Hands 
off!  Let  the  world  move!" 

The  "banker's  panic,"  created  by  the  restriction  of  credits  for  political 
effect  under  the  Cleveland  administration,  was  an  incident  of  the  collapse 
of  a  restrictive  system  of  distribution  in  the  presence  of  production  tending 
to  the  maximum. 

Between  1884  and  1894,  this  tendency  to  maximum  production  as  a 
law  of  nature,  imperative  in  its  results  showed  itself  in  manufacturing  as 
well  as  in  direct  production  from  the  soil.  It  is  clear  that  on  final  analysis, 
all  production  is  reducible  to  two  classifications  (i)  direct  from  the  soil 
in  agriculture  and  mining  and  (2)  secondary,  in  improving  the  form  of 
direct  products  as  in  changing  wheat  to  flour,  cotton  to  cloth  and  iron  ore 
to  plowshares.  Both  forms  are  necessary,  and  of  the  highest  value  to  civ 
ilization,  but  it  is  manifest  that  Mr.  Bland  did  not  err  in  holding  direct 
production  from  the  earth  as  of  primary  economic  importance. 

As  all  forms  of  legitimate  industrial  activity  are  reducible  to  produc 
tion  and  distribution  and  that  which  promotes  them,  we  have  as  the  agen 
cies  of  distribution  (i)  buyers  and  sellers  and  (2)  carriers  of  products 
between  buyers  and  sellers  or  producers  and  consumers.  Sustaining  them 
selves  at  the  expense  of  these,  but  under  favorable  conditions  capable  of 
greatly  promoting  their  activities  are  (i)  dealers  in  currency  and  actual 
credits  based  on  it  and  (2)  speculative  dealers  in  fictitious  credits  depend 
ing  on  the  rise  and  fall  of  prices. 

In  1894,  production,  direct  and  secondary,  had  increased  far  beyond 
the  possibilities  of  the  restrictive  system  of  distribution  to  handle  its  max 
imum  output.  With  people  starving  and  half  clad  in  the  great  cities  of 
the  United  States  and  Europe,  the  producer  with  food  and  clothing  he 
could  neither  use  himself  nor  monetize  as  wealth  by  supplying  it  to  the 
needy,  was  warned  over  and  over  of  the  dangers  of  "overproduction."  As 


AN  AMERICAN  COMMONER.  2Oy 

demonetized  wealth*  accumulated  on  the  farm  and  at  the  mouths  of  iron, 
lead,  coal  and  silver  mines,  undistributed  and  unused,  so  it  did  in  the  great 
workshops  and  factories  of  the  country.  As  this  product — far  more,  in 
the  reality  of  things  and  in  the  strict  use  of  language,  "demonetized"  than 
silver  had  ever  been — accumulated  as  undistributed  waste,  it  was  clearly 
necessary  to  do  one  of  two  things — either  to  change  the  whole  system  and 
to  adopt  a  system  giving  maximum  facilities  of  distribution  in  response 
to  maximum  production,  or  else  to  form  combinations,  cease  competition 
and  shut  down  the  factories  which  represented  possibilities  of  increasing 
production. 

The  latter  alternative  was  inevitable  under  the  circumstances.  "Where, 
under  a  restrictive  system,  combination  is  possible,  competition  and  the 
maximum  production  involved  by  competition  are  impossible."  No  doubt 
it  was  with  this  in  view  that  Senator  Vest  of  Missouri,  when  in  the  Senate 
the  secret  service  agents  of  plutocracy  proposed  to  "prohibit  trusts"  under 
the  Sherman  act  then  pending,  pointed  out  that  such  action  was  mere  "bru- 
tum  fulmen!" — in  English,  humbug! — the  political  economy  which  gov 
erns  the  Punch  and  Judy  show  where  the  economist  behind  the  curtain 
puts  into  Punchinello,  to  amuse  the  penny  producing  crowd  in  front,  only 
so  much  reality  as  can  be  transmitted  through  his  own  thumbs  to  the  cloth 
and  pasteboard  of  his  puppet. 

The  sugar  trust,  the  standard  oil  trust  and  the  national  banks, 
through  millionaire  stockholders  combined  in  various  other  syndicates,  po 
litical  and  commercial,  had  contributed  to  Mr.  Cleveland's  campaign  fund, 
but  this  fact  was  not  decisive  in  controlling  the  policies  of  his  administration 
towards  them.  The  complete  failure  to  enforce  the  Sherman  act  under 
two  administrations  elected  as  republican  and  one  inaugurated  as  demo 
cratic,  is  due  primarily  to  the  fact  that  every  indictment  under  it  is  the 
indictment  of  a  system,  and  every  punishment  under  it  would  be  the  pun 
ishment  of  a  theory  of  government  supported  and  carried  out  by  the  eco- 

*Wealth  of  any  kind  is  demonetized  when  it  has  lost  its  exchange  value. 


208  AN  AMERICAN  COMMONER. 

nomic  laws  and  the  executive  machinery  of  the  entire  United  States.  As 
long  as  distribution  is  restricted  by  law,  maximum  production  will  result 
in  a  demonetized  surplus,  and  no  penalty,  no  system  of  federal  regulation 
possible  or  imaginable  can  keep  in  operation  the  mills  whose  product  is 
thus  robbed  of  its  exchangeable  quality  as  wealth  and  reduced  to  mere 
waste. 

On  this  point  as  on  every  other  of  fundamental  importance,  Mr.  Bland 
was  calmly  logical.  He  saw  the  practical  politicians  of  both  parties  "fry 
ing  the  fat"  of  the  great  law-breaking  combinations  of  manufacturing  cor 
porations  by  threatening  them  with  a  justice  which  there  was  no  power 
to  execute — which  seemed  formidable  to  the  law-breakers  themselves  more 
because  of  their  own  consciousness  of  guilt  than  of  any  actual  intellectual 
and  reasonable  apprehension  of  being  brought  to  justice.  From  time  to 
time,  an  indictment,  found  in  the  state  or  the  federal  courts  by  the  officials 
of  whatever  party  happened  to  have  control  of  court  machinery,  would 
create  a  considerable  intellectual  disturbance  and  so  stimulate  moral  self- 
consciousness  in  the  law-breakers  as  to  facilitate  "voluntary  contributions" 
to  campaign  funds — on  their  percentages  from  which  as  collectors,  practi 
cal  statesmen  are  sometimes  obliged  to  depend  for  even  the  bare  necessaries 
of  life.  But  no  rational  mind  can  conclude  that  such  methods  are  capable 
of  restoring  or  even  of  promoting  free  production  and  distribution  under 
a  system  which  is  carefully  devised  to  restrict  both. 

With  mills  and  factories  shutting  down,  with  food  stuffs  and  raw 
material  for  clothing  "overproduced"  in  a  badly-clad  and  badly-fed  world, 
the  producers  of  the  country,  whether  farmers  or  factory-owners,  were 
reduced  to  the  lowest  point  of  productive  activity,  while  the  activity  of  the 
speculative  element,  which  thrives  on  the  wreckage  of  business,  increased. 
During  this  period,  the  dealers  in  credits  and  in  speculative  values,  threw 
into  the  hands  of  receivers,  one  after  another  of  the  great  railroad  systems 
on  which  the  producer  of  the  west  and  south  chiefly  depend,  and  re-or 
ganized  them  later  on,  largely  under  control  of  capitalists,  having  their 


AN  AMERICAN  COMMONER.  2O£ 

headquarters  in  London.  Out  of  the  immense  opportunity  given  by  this 
wreckage,  Mr.  J.  Pierpont  Morgan,  an  able  New  York  financier  who  is 
complimented  by  the  Rothschilds  with  the  management  of  much  of  their 
American  business  political  and  financial,  developed  power  as  a  reorganize! 
which  Mr.  Jay  Gould  had  never  equalled  at  his  best.  For  his  work  in  this 
line,  he  was  naturally  subjected  personally  to  some  reproach,  but  it  was 
not  the  result  of  logical  processes  of  thought.  His  operations  were  merely 
incidents  of  a  system,  and  they  were  inevitable  under  it.  As  a  result  of 
that  system,  the  wreckage  of  railroads,  the  collapse  of  the  manufacturing 
organizations,  the  failure  of  economic  machinery  for  exchanging  the  pro 
ducts  of  farm  and  mine,  all  followed  the  desperate  attack  made  by  the  com 
bined  currency-dealers  of  the  world  on  the  American  system  of  issuing 
cash  from  the  mints  and  the  treasury  to  supersede  corporation  paper  in  cir 
culation. 

The  collapse  of  the  whole  restrictive  system  came  when  nature  gave 
maximum  crops  to  this  country  in  the  same  years  with  crops  approaching 
the  maximum  in  Europe  and  the  southern  hemisphere.  Under  the  same 
system,  a  similar  collapse  is  as  inevitable  when  similar  conditions  recur 
as  are  the  operations  of  the  laws  governing  the  seemingly  lawless  trade 
winds  and  ocean  currents.  It  did  not  change  these  laws — it  only  made 
their  final  effects  more  emphatic,  when  after  forcing  panic  and  compelling 
further  restriction  of  exchange  through  the  cessation  of  bimetallic  coinage, 
the  "financiers"  took  advantage  of  the  apathy  of  the  country  to  go  into 
Mr.  Eland's  district  in  the  "off"  year  and  defeat  his  re-election — accom 
plishing  secretly  what  no1  amount  of  campaign  funds  behind  them  would 
have  made  possible  had  it  been  attempted  openly. 

This  done,  announcement  solemn  and  impressive,  was  made  that  free- 
coinage  was  dead  and  that  the  "16  to  I  cranks,"  were  "no  longer  in  a 
position  to  prevent  the  return  of  prosperity." 


CHAPTER  XXIV. 

"The  Right  Thing  from  the  Right  Man  at  the  Right  Time"  as  the  Decisive  Factor 
in  History  Making.— Mr.  Bland  Writes  a  Letter  and  Sees  a  Reporter.— Who 
Shall  Bolt:  Bland  or  Cleveland?— Why  and  How  Mr.  Cleveland  Was  Induced 
to  Bolt. — He  Himself  Forces  16  to  i  Coinage  as  an  Unavoidable  Issue. — 
His  Objections  to  Being  "Elected  Without  New  York"  in  1892.— His  View  of 
"Rainbow  Chasing"  as  Sectional  and  Dangerous. — Mr.  Bland  Consummates 
the  Work  of  the  Rainbow  Chasers  With  an  Interview  Defining  the  Vital  Issues 
of  the  Chicago  Platform. — The  Stand  Made  Against  International  Control  of 
the  American  Treasury  Forces  the  Republican  Party  to  a  Change  of  Base  in 
1896  and  to  Open  Alliance  With  English  Imperialists  in  1898. 


R.  BLAND  represented  in  1895  the  full  strength  of  the  issues 
on  which  Mr.  Harrison  had  been  defeated  in  1892.  These 
issues  involved  either  the  immediate  re-organization  or  the 
complete  disorganization  of  the  democratic  party.  After 
postponing  all  legislation  on  the  currency  in  order  "not  to  embarrass  tariff 
reform,"  tariff  reform  had  been  deliberately  put  out  of  sight  by  Mr.  Cleve 
land  as  the  first  act  of  his  second  term.  In  a  letter  of  July  n,  1893,  pub 
lished  at  the  time  over  a  fac-simile  of  his  signature,  Mr.  Bland  made  this 
situation  clear. 

"During  the  last  Congress,"  he  said,  "I  did  all  I  could  to  pass  a  free 
coinage  bill  in  the  House,  the  Senate  having  already  passed  it.  But  no — 
the  tariff  was  the  great  issue.  Now  the  tariff  is  brushed  aside  that  silver 
demonetization  may  be  accomplished.  Had  we  then  passed  a  free  coinage 
bill,  the  question  would  have  been  settled.  We  would  not  have  been  con 
fronted  with  the  British  demonetization  policy  in  India.  How  much 
longer  are  we  to  be  controlled  by  the  advocates  of  a  waiting  policy  ?  We 
are  now  by  this  dallying  brought  face  to  face  with  the  question  of  total 
silver  demonetization  in  this,  the  greatest  metallic  power  the  world  ever 
knew.  The  repeal  of  the  Sherman  law  unconditionally  is  all  that  is  neces 
sary  now  to  accomplish  this  end  for  which  the  gold  party  has  struggled 
from  the  beginning. 

The  democratic  party  promised  first  of  all  a  reform    of  the   tariff. 

210 


AN  AMERICAN  COMMONER.  211 

Tariff  reform  is  no  longer  talked  of  except  with  bated  breath.  The  east 
proposes  to  formulate  a  tariff  policy  on  the  lines  of  the  original  Chicago 
platform,  brought  forward  by  the  protectionist  element  of  the  democratic 
party  and  not  in  harmony  with  the  substitute  finally  adopted  by  the  con 
vention.*  They  now  also  propose  to  repeal  the  Sherman  law  without 
granting  the  free  coinage  part  of  our  platform. 

Our  eastern  friends  seem  to  regard  the  democratic  platform  on  the  sil 
ver  question  as  a  mere  seesaw.  As  the  Sherman  law  end  goes  down  the 
free  coinage  end  must  go  up  in  mid-air  and  remain  suspended  there. 

It  is  plain  to  all  now  that  they  played  a  huge  bunco  game  on  the 
democracy  of  the  south  and  west  by  lustily  preaching  tariff  reform,  a 
measure  so  popular  here,  but  at  the  same  time  intending  to  spring  upon  us, 
after  the  election,  the  sole  issue  of  silver  demonetization. 

If  the  representatives  of  the  west  and  south  are  true  to  themselves 
and  the  interests  of  their  constituents,  this  conspiracy  will  not  succeed. 
If  they  are  recreant,  the  people  will  hold  them  individually,  if  not  collec 
tively,  responsible  for  their  cringing  cowardice. 

To  repeal  the  Sherman  law  outright  and  substitute  nothing  for  it 
would  precipitate  a  silver  panic  throughout  the  world  and  probably  cause 
its  universal  demonetization,  a  consummation  devoutly  wished  by  the  gold 
party.  It  seems  to  me  no  true  friend  of  silver  could  advocate  such  a 
policy. 

If  we  ever  intend  the  free  coinage  of  silver  in  this  country  we  must 
fight  for  it  now — right  now." 

The  recipient  of  this  letter  supplied  it  for  publication  to  the  St.  Louis 
Chronicle  with  Mr.  Eland's  approval.  The  impression  it  produced  was 
profound  and  lasting. 

From  this  time  on,  it  became  more  and  more  evident  that  either  Mr. 
Cleveland  and  his  supporters  or  else  all  those  who  held  Mr.  Eland's  views 
of  opposition  to  restriction  of  the  currency  and  trade  must  leave  the  demo 
cratic  party.  Mr.  Cleveland  had  made  this  inevitable  and  it  was  accepted 


*Mr.  Bland  here  refers  more  especially  to  Mr.  William  C.  Whitney  who  represented  Mr.  Cleveland 
on  the  platform  committee  of  the  Chicago  convention  of  1892,  and,  with  his  usual  skill  in  such  matters, 
contrived  to  have  a  majority  of  the  platform  committee  favorable  to  his  views.  See  preceding  chapter. 
The  "plank"  in  favor  of  "tariff  for  revenue  only"  rejected  by  Mr.  Whitney  in  the  committee  was 
written  in  Missouri  by  the  same  person  to  whom  Mr.  Bland  wrote  the  above  letter.  The  knowledge  of 
the  situation  expressed  by  Mr.  Bland  was  not  theoretical  merely. 


212  AN  AMEPaCAN  COMMONER. 

as  inevitable — though  he  did  not  seem  to  have  contemplated  it  as  a  neces 
sity  of  the  situation  until  the  Chicago  convention  of  1896  had  actually  been 
held. 

The  pivotal  point  of  the  situation  was  the  fact  of  the  then  existing 
international  control  of  the  United  States  treasury.  Mr.  Cleveland  had 
not  indorsed  the  campaign  for  carrying  Kansas  and  Illinois  against  Mr. 
Harrison.  He  had  regarded  objections  to  New  York  "hegemony"  as 
sectional  and  dangerous,  and  not  understanding  the  realities  of  opposition 
to  sectionalism  involved  in  it,  had  written  letters  to  Missouri  attempting 
to  check  it.  He  did  not  succeed  in  doing  so,  however,  and  after  his  proc 
lamation  against  silver  had  defeated  tariff  reform,  the  sectionalism  of  the 
Civil  war  was  so  far  disposed  of  also,  that  the  only  logical  issue  was  against 
the  control  of  the  United  States  treasury  by  foreign  financiers  operating 
through  national  banks,  and  issuing  currency  on  bonds  owned  abroad. 

After  Mr.  Cleveland's  policy  had  been  fully  developed  under  his 
second  administration,  it  was  thought  that  the  democratic  party,  if  not 
relieved  of  responsibility  for  it,  would  hardly  carry  half  a  dozen  states — 
that  Missouri,  Tennessee,  North  Carolina,  Georgia  and  everything  west 
of  the  Mississippi  and  north  of  the  Ohio  would  vote  for  anything  to  show 
dissent  from  his  policies. 

As  democratic  congressmen  and  senators,  controlled  by  the  influence 
of  patronage  and  by  pressure  from  the  national  banks,  had  not  checked  Mr. 
Cleveland  as  they  might  easily  have  done,  the  democratic  organization  as 
they  represented  it  had  no  right  to  repudiate  him  and  no  right  to  win  by 
repudiating  him.  But  the  issue  was  not  one  of  party.  Mr.  Bland  put 
principle  high  above  partisanship.  He  had  determined  to  stand  for  prin 
ciple  at  any  cost,  and  it  was  clear  that  Mr.  Cleveland  and  the  national 
banking  element  he  represented,  would  bolt  any  platform  which  stood  for 
bimetallism  and  a  cash  currency  against  one  of  national  bank  paper. 

Under  such  circumstances,  it  was  from  the  standpoint  of  bimetallism, 
highly  desirable  that  Mr.  Cleveland  should  "bolt"  rather  than  that  the 


AN  AMERICAN  COMMONER.  213 

advocates  of  bimetallism  should  be  forced  to  do  so.  The  issues  shaped 
themselves  to  this  end  from  early  in  1895,  and  Mr.  Bland  did  more  than 
any  one  else  to  give  them  their  direction. 

This  was  done  to  a  very  great  extent  already  by  his  "parting  of  the 
ways"  speech,  by  similar  speeches  in  Congress  and  by  the  letter  quoted 
above  as  it  appeared  in  the  St.  Louis  Chronicle.  The  results  seem  to  have 
been  made  conclusive,  however,  by  a  carefully  calculated  interview  which 
appeared  in  the  Cincinnati  Enquirer  in  March,  1895.  General  Hawkins, 
editor  of  the  St.  Louis  Chronicle  when  the  struggle  opened  between  Mr. 
Bland  and  Mr.  Cleveland,  had  now  become  managing  editor  of  the  Cin 
cinnati  Enquirer  and  his  influence  secured  for  that  newspaper  one  of  the 
most  decisive  interviews  ever  published  in  America.  Before  sending  to 
Lebanon,  General  Hawkins,  wrote  to  an  acquaintance  of  Mr.  Eland's  that 
Mr.  Bland  was  not  likely  to  remain  in  any  party  dominated  by  Mr.  Cleve 
land's  policies  and  asked  for  a  schedule  of  questions,  involving  the  pos 
sibility  of  answers  which  would  not  only  define  Mr.  Eland's  views,  but 
would  direct  public  attention  to  the  decisive  issues  of  what  would  become 
the  "new  politics"  of  the  coming  struggle.  These  questions  prepared  in 
harmony  with  Mr.  Eland's  known  views,  elicited  the  interview  which  de 
cided  what  the  Chicago  plaform  of  1896  should  be — especially  in  its  crucial 
feature  of  protest,  direct  and  absolute,  against  international  control  of 
American  mints  and  the  American  treasury.  As  this  interview  follows 
below,  it  has  been  submitted  for  revision  to  the  same  person  who  prepared 
the  questions  for  it: 

LEBANON,  Mo.,  March  23. — Richard  Parks  Bland,  the  great  apostle 
of  silver,  and  one  of  the  most  intelligent  and  forceful  advocates  of  bimetal 
lism  in  the  world,  is  still  a  democrat,  all  reports  to  the  contrary  notwith 
standing.  I  found  him  at  his  home  to-day  near  this  city,  and  had  the 
highly  interesting  interview  with  him  which  follows.  Mr.  Bland  appeared 


214  AN  AMERICAN  COMMONER. 

to  weigh  carefully  every  word  he  uttered,  though  he  talked  with  the  utmost 
freedom.  The  only  question  he  declined  to  answer  was  as  to  what  he 
would  advise  his  party  followers  to  do  in  the  event  that  the  next  democratic 
national  convention  nominated  a  ticket  and  adopted  a  platform  in  harmony 
with  the  Cleveland  administration  on  the  monetary  question. 

"What  is  the  present  condition  of  the  country  in  regard  to  debt?" 
was  the  first  question  asked  and  Mr.  Bland  replied : 

"In  speaking  of  debts  we  should  consider  the  national  debts,  the  state 
debts,  municipal  debts,  county  debts,  railroad  and  other  corporation 
debts  as  well  as  all  private  debts.  It  may  be  stated  generally  that 
the  national  debt  is  near  $1,000,000,000,  and  at  the  present  low 
price  of  commodities  and  the  products  of  labor  it  will  take  as  much 
of  these  products  generally  to  pay  the  $1,000,000,000  debts  at  this 
time  as  it  would  have  required  to  pay  the  national  debt  when  it  was 
$2,000,000,000.  In  other  words  since  the  demonetization  of  silver, 
prices  have  gone  down  nearly  one  half.  Our  railroad  debt  alone  is  prob 
ably  not  below  $5,000,000,000.  Mr.  Sibley,  in  a  valuable  speech  in  Con 
gress  on  January  8,  1895,  in  this  connection,  said:  Nothing  can  more 
clearly  show  the  effects  of  falling  prices  than  the  interest  charged  upon  the 
indebtedness  of  the  people  of  the  Union,  as  exemplified  by  the  following 
article  from  a  weekly  newspaper,  to  which  my  attention  has  been  called. 
Mr.  Walker,  a  republican  member  of  Congress  from  Massachusetts,  says 
the  people  of  the  United  States  owe  debts,  public  and  private,  to  the 
amount  of  $32,000,000,000.  Now,  we  take  Mr.  Walker  as  authority  be 
cause  he,  coming  from  a  New  England  state  and  being  a  republican,  will 
not  be  accused  of  placing  the  figures  too  high.  It  is  claimed  by  some  that  the 
rate  of  interest  on  this  indebtedness  will  average  eight  per  cent,  per  annum. 
But  to  be  entirely  safe  and  to  be  conservative,  and  for  the  purpose  of  giv 
ing  to  the  public  a  birds-eye  view  of  their  condition,  we  will  place  the 
rate  at  six  per  cent.  Now,  six  per  cent,  on  $32,000,000,000  amounts  to 
$1,920,000,000.  In  1892  we  raised  1,628,464,000  bushels  of  corn.  At  40 
cents  per  bushel  we  would  have  $651,385,600  as  its  total  value.  Our 
wheat  crop  the  same  year  was  519,400,000  bushels.  At  an  average  of 
80  cents  per  bushel  we  realized  $415,592,000.  Our  oat  crop  was  661,- 
037,000  bushels.  At  25  cents  per  bushel  we  have  $165,259,000.  Our  gold 
mines  produced  $33,000,000  and  our  silver  mines  $75,000,000. 


AN  AMERICAN  COMMONER. 

'Now  let  us  add  this  together  and  see  what  the  result  will  be: 

Value  of  corn  crop $  651,385,600 

Value  of  wheat  crop 415,592,000 

Value  of  oat  crop.  ..    .  ... ,...  165,259,000 

Value  of  gold  crop 33,000,000 

Value  of  silver  crop 75,000,000 

Total $1,340,236,600 

Interest  on  debt $  1,920,000,000 


Difference $     579,763,400 

"I  know  Mr.  Walker  well,  and  know  him  to  be  a  student  of  political 
economy,  and  he  would  not  be  likely  to  state  the  amount  of  debt  of  our 
people  in  an  exaggerated  sense.  Indeed,  Mr.  Harvey,  in  his  book,  called 
'Coin's  Financial  School/  says  (page  119)  the  total  debt  in  the  United 
States,  national,  municipal,  state,  county,  corporate  and  private,  is  now 
estimated  at  $40,000,000,006.  The  railroad  bonded  debt  is  $5,000,000,000, 
or  one-eighth  of  the  whole  amount. 

"The  interest  on  $40,000,000,000  at  an  average  rate  of  six  per  cent.,  is 
$2,400,000,000.  I  have  no  doubt  that  the  estimate  of  Coin  as  given  by  Mr. 
Harvey  is  more  nearly  correct  than  that  attributed  to  Mr.  Walker." 

"How  much  of  this  debt  is  held  abroad  ?" 

"Of  course  it  is  difficult  to  estimate  or  determine  the  amount  accu 
rately.  There  is  such  a  close  connection  between  the  great  banking  houses 
of  New  York,  Boston  and  commercial  centers  and  the  banking  houses  of 
London,  Berlin  and  Paris  that  whatever  of  our  securities  may  be  negoti 
ated  in  our  own  commercial  center  we  can  not  determine  how  much  of 
this  amount  has  really  been  negotiated  for  banking  houses  in  for 
eign  countries,  with  which  our  own  banking  firms  are  usually  con 
nected  as  agents  or  copartners.  It  is  well  known  that  the  principal 
banking  firms  of  New  York  and  London  are  branches  of  the  same 
institutions;  in  other  words,  Wall  street  and  Lombard  street  are 
twin  brothers  in  finance.  Our  recent  bond  negotiations  of  $64,000,000 
show  the  close  connection  between  the  banking  houses  of  New  York  and 
the  Rothschilds  of  London.  I  may  linger  for  a  moment  here  to  add  that- 
there  is  a  gold  trust;  that  the  gold  can  be  cornered  at  any  time  against  even 
a  powerful  government  like  our  own.  This  fact  was  practically  admitted 
by  the  secretary  of  the  treasury  when  he  recently  stated  in  connection  with 
the  negotiation  of  the  $64,000,000  of  bonds  that  he  had  endeavored  to  nego- 


2l6  AN  AMERICAN  COMMONER. 

tiate  his  loan  in  New  York,  and  that  also  by  cable  to  London,  but  that  he 
was  wholly  unable  to  do  so  until  he  had  agreed  with  a  bond  syndicate  or 
trust  composed  of  bankers  in  New  York  and  London,  and  was  compelled 
to  negotiate  with  the  trust  or  syndicate  at  a  loss  of  over  $10,000,000  to  the 
government.  If,  therefore,  the  owners  of  gold  can  thus  corner  the  gov 
ernment  of  the  United  States,  how  much  more  easily  can  they  corner  the 
poor  private  debtors  of  this  country  and  the  world !  And  in  forcing  the 
negotiations  of  loans  and  the  payment  of  loans  so  long  as  gold  is  the  sole 
standard  of  payment  they  can  force  these  private  debtors  into  utter  ruin 
and  bankruptcy.  Even  the  great  railroad  corporations  of  the  country  can 
not  withstand  the  pressure  of  the  single  gold  standard.  This  is  proved  by 
the  fact  of  so  many  of  them  being  in  the  hands  of  receivers. 

"To  return  to  the  question  as  to  the  amount  of  our  debt  payable  abroad : 
Mr.  Gladstone,  as  a  part  of  his  objection  to  England  adopting  bimetal 
lism,  claimed  that  the  world  owed  England  no  less  than  $10,000,000,000  in 
gold ;  that  bimetallism  meant  the  depreciation  of  gold  or,  what  is  the  same 
thing,  an  appreciation  of  all  commodities.  Doubtless,  our  debt  to 
England  in  the  way  of  interest  and  other  charges  exceeds  $500,000,000 
annually.  While  we  have  no  means  of  knowing  positively  the  amount, 
yet  the  fact  that  our  exports  exceed  largely  our  imports,  and  that  we  are 
constantly  shipping  gold  and  losing  our  gold,  would  go  to  show  that  our 
foreign  debt  must  be  very  great. 

"In  a  statement  by  Mr.  George  A.  Butler,  president  of  a  national  bank 
in  Connecticut,  a  strong  advocate  and  a  very  intelligent  man,  before  the 
committee  on  banking  and  currency  last  year,  he  said  it  is  estimated  that 
Americans  spend  abroad  every  year  $90,000,000 ;  another  $60,000,000  goes 
abroad  on  various  investments  in  this  country  held  abroad.  That  is  $150,- 
000,000;  add  to  that  $25,000,000  or  $30,000,000  paid  out  for  foreign 
freight  and  $10,000,000  for  insurance  and  sundries,  making  in  all  $195,,- 
000,000.  Say  we  receive  $40,000,000  from  immigrants,  there  would  be 
still  left  $135,000,000  in  the  nature  of  maturing  obligations  against  the 
country  independent  of  any  commercial  transactions.  Unquestionably  the 
estimate  of  Mr.  Butler  as  to  the  interest  paid  abroad  is  too  low  by  half. 
But  no  matter  whether  this  interest  is  paid  to  Old  England  or  New  En 
gland,  it  is  paid  from  the  products  of  labor  and  principally  from  the  prod 
ucts  of  agriculture  from  the  south  and  the  west.  To  pay  this  interest  at  this 
time  on  the  gold  standard  requires  twice  the  number  of  bushels  of  wheat 


AN  AMERICAN  COMMONER.  2 17 

and  bales  of  cotton  and  double  the  amount  of  farm  products  generally  to 
pay  the  estimated  $2,400,000,000  interest  annually  that  would  have  been 
required  prior  to  the  demonetization  of  silver.  In  other  words  since  i8?3 
there  has  been  a  fall  of  prices  of  more  than  fifty  per  cent.  The  question  of 
debtor  and  creditor,  however,  is  not  the  only  question  involved  in  the 
silver  question,  nor  the  most  important  question.  Should  the  owners  of 
gold,  and  creditors  generally,  force  the  whole  world  into  liquidation,  and 
sell  out  all  debtors,  even  forcing  them  to  bankruptcy,  and  at  the  same  time 
consent  to  the  full  restoration  of  the  free  coinage  of  silver  as  it  existed 
prior  to  1873,  the  revival  of  business  and  the  revival  of  prices  of  the 
products  of  labor  consequent  to  such  restoration  would  immediately  set  in 
motion  the  great  productive  industries  of  the  country,  and  thus  enable  the 
laboring  people  and  the  impoverished  debtors  to  so  prosper  to  such  an  extent 
as  would  put  them  in  a  better  condition  ten  years  hence  than  they  would  be 
to  forego  the  foreclosure  of  mortgages  and  the  liquidation  of  debts.  In 
other  words,  the  debtors  could  better  afford  at  this  time  to  give  up  every 
thing  they  have  to  their  creditors  in  exchange  for  the  full  restoration  of  sil 
ver  than  to  risk  the  payment  of  their  debts  under  the  single  gold  standard, 
Money  being  but  a  tool  of  industry  in  one  sense  and  in  the  greater  sense,  the 
restoration  of  silver  would  furnish  the  tool  by  which  to  set  every  man  to 
work  and  revive  the  activity  of  every  industry  of  this  country,  which 
would  result  in  an  enormous  production  of  wealth,  the  only  remedy  for 
starvation  and  poverty,  and  the  only  way  by  which  debts  can  be  met  and 
paid  without  confiscation  and  bankruptcy." 

"What  have  you  to  say  of  the  desire  of  foreign  bankers  for  the  perpet 
uation  of  our  national  debt  ?  Do  you  believe  they  seek  to  control  our  cur 
rency  or  prevent  the  opening  of  our  mints  to  the  free  coinage  of  silver?" 

"My  observation  in  Congress  for  the  last  20  years,  and  ever  since  the 
agitation  of  the  silver  question,  convinces  me  beyond  a  doubt  that  the  bank 
ing  houses  of  London  and  Berlin,  especially  through  their  branch  banks 
in  New  York,  seek  to  control  absolutely  the  monetary  affairs  of  this  coun 
try.  I  have  never  seen  the  free  coinage  of  silver  agitated  in  Congress 
without  the  interference  of  these  foreigners.  The  moment  a  free  coinage 
bill  or  any  bill  looking  to  the  restoration  of  silver  is  brought  up  in  Congress 
the  New  York  papers  are  filled  with  dispatches  from  the  banking  houses 
and  the  press  of  London  and  Berlin  warning  this  country  against  the  sin 
gle  silver  standard,  and  to  intimidate  Congress  they  immediately  set  to 


2i8  AN  AMERICAN  COMMONER. 

work  to  draw  gold  from  the  federal  treasury  and  ship  it  abroad  and  charge 
that  the  agitation  of  the  silver  question  is  drawing  all  of  the  gold  out  of  this 
country.  They  return  their  American  bonds  and  securities  with  the  threat 
of  forcing  them  on  the  American  market  because  of  an  alleged  fear  of  a 
single  silver  standard.  The  New  York  bankers,  the  clearing  house  asso 
ciations,  chambers  of  commerce  and  boards  of  trade  take  up  this  for 
eign  refrain  by  passing  resolutions  denouncing  silver  and  imme 
diately  telegraph  blank  resolutions  to  be  passed  by  the  various 
boards  of  trade  and  chambers  of  commerce  throughout  the  country 
to  be  sent  to  Congress  protesting  against  the  restoration  of  silver. 
The  bankers  of  London  and  New  York  deliberately  planned  and  executed 
a  panic  in  this  country  to  secure  the  repeal  of  the  purchasing  clause  of  the 
Sherman  act.  That  fact  I  think  will  be  generally  admitted  by  every  observ 
ant  man,  who  will  express  honestly  his  convictions.  Their  power  has 
been  felt  on  every  occasion  when  silver  has  been  the  subject  of  legislation 
in  Congress.  That  we  are  at  the  mercy  of  foreigners  on  the  money  ques 
tion  is  admitted  by  every  honest  advocate  of  the  gold  standard.  The  fact 
is,  about  the  only  argument  they  make  for  the  gold  standard  is  based  on 
the  theory  that  we  must  have  the  same  money  that  European  countries 
have.  Whatever  Europe  says  on  the  money  question  we  must  say,  'What 
ever  Europe  does  we  must  do.  Whatever  Europe  tells  us  to  do  we  are  com 
pelled  to  do  or  else  we  can  negotiate  no  loans  in  Europe.  We  are  told  that 
we  can  not  live  and  prosper  without  European  aid ;  hence  our  money  must 
be  gold  because  Europe  says  it  must  be  gold,  or  else  Europe  will  loan  us 
no  money/  Of  course  we  understand  that  the  bondholders  of  Europe 
and  this  country  are  opposed  to  the  restoration  of  silver  because  the  restor 
ation  of  silver  will  greatly  cheapen  gold  by  coming  in  competition  with 
gold  as  a  money  metal  of  ultimate  redemption.  Again,  it  is  understood 
that  the  cheapening  of  gold  means  a  rise  in  the  price  of  commodities  and 
all  other  things  but  gold.  In  other  words,  instead  of  the  bondholder  get 
ting  for  his  dollar  two  bushels  of  wheat  he  would  get  but  one,  and  so  on 
with  all  other  agricultural  products  as  well  as  of  the  factory  and  mine." 

"What  connection,  if  any,  do  you  believe  exists  between  the  foreign 
and  home  bankers  and  the  metropolitan  press  of  New  York  ?" 

"This  question  may  be  answered  by  stating  that  not  only  the  metropol 
itan  press  of  New  York,  but  unfortunately  to  some  extent  the  press 
throughout  the  country,  seems  to  be  in  harmony  with  foreign  banking 


AN  AMERICAN  COMMONER.  2 19 

institutions  and  those  of  this  country.  The  public  pretty  generally  believes 
that  the  accommodations  and  loans  furnished  the  metropolitan  press  have 
much  to  do  with  this." 

"Has  the  Cleveland  administration  been  under  the  control  of  this 
influence  ?" 

"I  have  no  doubt  that  Mr.  Cleveland  honestly  believes  in  the  single 
gold  standard,  and  honestly  believing  in  the  single  gold  standard,  of  course 
the  gold  standard  advocates  have  his  ear,  to  the  exclusion  of  the  advocates 
of  silver  restoration.  Of  course  Mr.  Cleveland  believes  we  must  have 
whatever  money  Europe  has,  else  we  can  not  negotiate  our  loans  there. 
If  Europe  says  we  must  have  gold,  Mr.  Cleveland  says  we  must  have  gold. 
If  Europe  says  we  should  not  restore  silver,  Mr.  Cleveland  says  we 
shall  not  restore  silver.  If  Europe  and  Wall  street  say  we  must  redeem 
all  our  greenbacks  and  treasury  notes,  as  well  as  silver  dollars  and  silver 
certificates  in  gold,  of  course  Mr.  Cleveland  says  they  must  all  be  redeem 
ed  in  gold.  If  a  silver  dollar  should  be  treated  as  redemption  money,  the 
bankers  of  New  York  and  London  say  it  would  immediately  bankrupt 
the  treasury ;  consequently  in  deference  to  these  gentlemen  we  must  redeem 
even-thing  in  gold.  This,  of  course,  forced  the  Cleveland  administration, 
as  it  forced  all  republican  administrations  before  it,  to  rely  upon  the 
bankers  of  New  York  and  London  to  run  the  treasury  department  as  they 
saw  proper,  and  not  as  the  American  people  wished." 

"What  have  you  to  say  about  the  redemption  of  the  silver  dollar  and 
silver  certificate  in  gold?" 

"The  law  restoring  the  standard  silver  dollar,  'the  Bland-Allison  act/ 
intended  to  make  the  dollar  a  dollar  of  redemption,  and  not  a  charge  upon 
the  treasury,  and  it  was  so  understood  at  the  time,  and  until  the  pas 
sage  of  the  Sherman  act.  The  Sherman  act  provided  that  the  notes 
issued  in  the  purchase  of  silver  bullion  under  said  act  should  be  redeemed 
in  gold  or  silver  coin,  at  the  discretion  of  the  secretary  of  the  treas 
ury,  declaring  in  that  connection  it  to  be  the  established  policy  of  the  gov 
ernment  to  maintain  the  two  metals  at  a  parity.  This  provision  was  in 
serted  at  the  earnest  dictation  of  Senator  John  Sherman,  and  has  been  con 
strued  to  mean  by  every  secretary  of  the  treasury,  as  well  as  Mr.  Sherman, 
that,  in  order  to  maintain  the  parity,  gold  must  be  paid  whenever  de 
manded;  in  consequence  of  this,  silver  has  been  treated  practically  as  a 
debtor  charge  upon  the  treasury,  instead  of  redemption  money.  So  the 


22O  AN  AMERICAN  COMMONER. 

practical  effect  of  this  act  has  been  to  depreciate  silver  and  appreciate  gold — 
intensifying  the  strain  on  gold  and  lowering  prices.  That  portion  of  the 
act  especially  ought  to  have  been  repealed,  instead  of  repealing  the  pur 
chase  clause,  but  that  part  of  the  act  was  left  standing,  and  is  enforced 
to-day  so  as  practically  to  outlaw  our  silver  coin  as  well  as  silver  bullion. 
The  effect  of  this,  as  stated  before,  has  been  to  lower  prices  and  destroy 
business  activities.  It  has  been  exemplified  to  the  American  people — the 
impossibility  of  maintaining  prosperity  with  silver  thus  outlawed." 

"What  is  the  effect  of  currency  contraction  to  the  gold  basis  upon 
our  railways,  factories,  real  estate,  farms,  and  farm  products,  the  business 
of  the  merchant  and  the  workers  generally?" 

"I  have  before  instanced  the  fact  of  the  enormous  amount  of  railroad 
property  now  in  the  hands  of  receivers.  Railroads  are  public  institutions 
as  well  as  private  corporations.  As  private  corporations  they  have 
suffered  tremendously  in  consequence  of  want  of  prosperity  among 
the  people.  They  depend  for  their  earnings  principally  upon  the 
products  of  the  soil  and  the  factory  and  the  mine.  In  the  first 
instance,  upon  the  farm.  If  agricultural  people  are  prosperous  they 
will  consume  more  largely  of  the  products  of  the  factory  and  the 
mine,  thus  causing  producers  and  consumers  generally  to  prosper. 
The  railroads  in  transporting  and  making  the  exchange  of  the  products 
of  the  factories  and  of  the  farms  and  of  the  mines  make  their  profits. 
Without  prosperity  among  the  laboring  people  of  the  farm,  mine  and  fac 
tory  the  railroads  can  not  prosper.  The  dire  distress  of  railroad  invest 
ment  at  this  time  is  an  object  lesson  which  must  show  all  attentive  observ 
ers  that  the  whole  country  is  suffering.  In  this  connection  it  may  be  cited 
as  another  object  lesson  of  the  gold  standard  that  the  railroads  are  now 
endeavoring  by  every  means  possible  to  save  themselves  from  the  disasters 
consequent  to  the  single  gold  standard.  To  this  end  they  secured  the  pas 
sage  of  a  bill  in  the  House  of  Representatives  last  winter  authorizing 
them  to  pool  and  combine,  and  thus  by  a  system  of  monopoly  escape  im 
pending  ruin.  The  bill  failed  to  pass  the  Senate.  It  may  be  possible  for 
powerful  corporations  and  monopolies  in  the  future  to  partially  escape 
the  effects  of  the  single  gold  standard  by  way  of  special  legislation. 

"The  single  gold  standard  is  driving  the  people  of  this  country  to  the 
shelter  of  a  paternal  government.  The  manufacturer  seeks  his  bounty 
in  the  way  of  tariffs ;  railroads  and  other  corporations  by  favorable  legis- 


AN  AMERICAN  COMMONER.  221 

lation  to  them  on  the  part  of  Congress;  bankers  and  money  lenders  by 
insisting  on  legislation  that  will  make  their  property  more  valuable  from 
year  to  year,  and  insisting  that  the  government  shall  not  issue  its  legal  ten 
der  coin  silver  money,  but  shall  surrender  the  power  to  issue  money  to 
the  banks.  The  great  mass  of  the  working  people  in  all  productive  indus 
tries,  however,  are  neglected,  and  the  whole  burden  is  shifted  upon  their 
shoulders." 

"Is  there  not  an  identity  of  interest  among  the  farmers,  the  railroads, 
merchants,  American  manufacturers  and  workers  generally  against  the 
money  dealers  here  and  in  Europe?"  Mr.  Bland  was  asked. 

"As  I  stated  in  answer  to  previous  questions,"  he  replied,  "the  prosper 
ity  of  the  railroads,  farmers,  merchants,  manufacturers  and  workers  gener 
ally  is  mutually  dependent.  It  is  to  be  regretted  that  they  do  not  work 
together  for  mutual  relief.  Assuming  that  the  restoration  of  silver  will 
accomplish  the  restoration  of  prices  and  prosperity  in  this  country,  it 
would  not  be  difficult  for  the  vast  productive  interests  embraced  in  the 
question  to  bring  about  adequate  legislation  on  the  subject.  This  would  be 
a  blessing  to  all  and  more  advantageous  to  any  particular  class  than  special 
legislation  for  them  would  be.  Of  course,  the  money  lenders  of  this 
country  and  Europe  have  great  power  because  of  their  money.  It  is  selfish 
in  them  to  undertake,  as  they  do,  to  sit  at  the  tollgates  along  the  highways 
of  all  human  activities  and  allow  no  one  to  pass  until  he  has  paid  them 
their  demands.  These  demands  are  becoming  so  exorbitant  as  to  work 
practical  confiscation  upon  debtors  and  destruction  to  the  business 
prosperity  of  the  people.  Values  are  constantly  going  down,  and  deprecia 
tion  is  written  upon  every  piece  of  property  throughout  the  country.  The 
day  has  come  when  even  bonds  and  mortgages  are  depreciating,  except 
such  as  are  government  securities.  The  day  is  coming,  if  it  is  not  here 
now,  when  mortgages  must  depreciate  because  of  the  utter  lack  of  security 
upon  which  they  are  based.  The  European  money  lender  may  get  his 
pound  of  flesh,  but  woe  be  to  him  when  he  exacts  one  drop  of  American 
blood.  I  can  not  better  describe  the  situation  than  was  foretold  by  Hon. 
John  G.  Carlisle,  now  secretary  of  the  treasury,  and  Mr.  Elaine,  then  a 
senator  of  the  United  States,  pending  the  discussion  of  what  was  known 
as  the  Bland-Allison  bill  in  Congress.  Mr.  Blaine,  following  the  same  line 
of  argument  and  thought  in  the  Senate,  used  this  language :  'On  the  much- 
vexed  and  long-mooted  question  of  a  bimetallic  or  monometallic  standard, 


222  AN  AMERICAN  COMMONER. 

my  own  views  are  sufficiently  indicated  in  the  remarks  I  have  made.  I 
believe  the  struggle  now  going  on  in  this  country  and  in  other  countries 
for  a  single  gold  standard  would,  if  successful,  produce  wide-spread  disas 
ter  in  and  throughout  the  commercial  world.  The  destruction  of  silver  as 
money  and  establishing  gold  as  the  sole  unit  of  value  must  have  a  ruinous 
effect  on  all  forms  of  property,  except  these  investments  which  yield  a 
fixed  return  in  money.  These  would  be  enormously  enhanced  in  value, 
and  would  gain  a  disproportionate  and  unfair  advantage  over  every  other 
species  of  property.  If,  as  the  most  reliable  statistics  affirm,  there  are 
nearly  $7,ooo,ooo,ooo  of  coin  or  bullion  in  the  world,  not  very  unequally 
divided  between  gold  and  silver,  it  is  impossible  to  strike  silver  out  of 
existence  as  money  without  results  which  will  prove  distressing  to  mil 
lions  and  utterly  disastrous  to  thousands.  I  believe  gold  and  silver  coin 
to.be  the  money  of  the  Constitution — indeed,  the  money  of  the  American 
people — anterior  of  the  Constitution,  which  the  great  organic  law  recog 
nized  as  quite  independent  of  its  own  existence.  No  power  has  conferred 
on  Congress  to  declare  either  metal  should  not  be  money.  Congress  has, 
therefore,  in  my  judgment,  no  power  to  demonetize  either  any  more  than  to 
demonetize  both.  If,  therefore,  silver  has  been  demonetized,  I  am  in 
favor  of  remonetizing  it.  If  its  coinage  has  been  prohibited  I  am  in 
favor  of  having  it  resumed.  If  it  has  been  restricted  I  am  in  favor  of  hav 
ing  it  enlarged/ 

"The  fact  that  statesmen,  when  this  question  was  first  broached,  and 
before  the  money  power  got  its  hand  upon  it,  expressed  not  only  their  hon 
est  sentiments,  but  the  true  situation,  speaks  volumes  for  the  sincerity 
of  the  expressions  then  made,  and  throws  a  shade  of  discredit  upon  any 
professed  change  of  heart.  The  further  fact  that  the  very  things  prac 
ticed  by  Mr.  Carlisle  and  Mr.  Elaine  in  consequence  of  a  single  gold 
standard  shows  that  they  had  a  better  foresight  of  the  future  than  the 
appreciation  the  same  class  of  statesmen  have  of  present  conditions." 

"Do  you  think  the  workers  of  New  York  and  New  England,  and  those 
of  the  Ohio  and  Mississippi  Valleys  have  a  common  interest  on  this  ques 
tion?" 

"I  certainly  do,  and  believe  if  a  fair  expression  of  opinions  could 
be  had  from  them  they  would  show  unanimity,  for  as  I  stated  before, 
money  in  its  greater  sense  is  a  tool  of  trade  and  industry,  and  is  as  much 
a  necessity  to  the  workers  of  New  England  and  New  York,  as  to  those  of 


AN  AMERICAN  COMMONER.  223 

the  south  and  west.  It  is  quite  evident  that  the  time  has  come  when  the 
American  people  must  make  a  bold  stand  for  American  democracy  as 
against  foreign  plutocracy.  The  moneyed  plutocracy  of  the  world  has 
interfered  with  our  legislation,  as  I  before  pointed  out.  They  are  ruin- 
ning  the  agricultural  people  of  this  country  and  that  means  the  ruin  of 
the  manufacturers,  the  merchants  and  all  workers.  At  their  dictation  and 
behest  we  have  been  driven  to  the  single  gold  standard.  They  have  done 
this  to  procure  the  products  of  our  soil  at  one-half  their  value.  Of  course, 
it  is  understood,  that  our  vast  debts  abroad  and  commercial  transactions 
are  liquidated  not  in  money,  but  for  the  most  in  commodities.  These 
commodities  are  measured  under  the  gold  standard  by  gold  only.  Gold 
having  gone  up  to  nearly  double  what  it  was  before  silver  was  demone 
tized  and  this  high-priced  gold  being  the  measure  of  our  commodities  it 
necessarily  means  that  it  takes  twice  the  amount  of  our  export  commodities 
to  liquidate  these  debts  abroad  that  it  took  before  the  demonetization  of  sil 
ver.  Thus  foreigners  have  swindled  the  producers  of  this  country  in  the  last 
twenty  years  out  of  hundreds  of  millions  of  dollars  annually.  It  was  said  in 
the  days  of  Jefferson,  Madison,  Monroe,  Jackson,  Benton  and  the  great 
democratic  fathers  of  our  early  history  that  England  sought  to  control 
this  country  by  controlling  our  financial  system.  Among  the  strongest 
arguments  they  made  against  the  old  national  bank  and  national  banking 
institutions  of  their  day  was  based  upon  the  fact  that  English  money  and 
English  capital  were  largely  involved  in  the  banks,  and  the  foreigners  thus 
practically  controlled  the  operation  of  the  bank,  and  that  the  national  bank 
practically  controlled  the  financial  operations  of  the  government  and  the 
people  of  this  country ;  that  the  foreigner  was  not  satisfied  thus  to  control 
the  financial  institutions  of  the  country,  but  sought,  through  the  instru- 
mentally  of  the  banks,  also  to  control  the  politics  of  the  country.  The 
Cleveland  administration  has  been  run  upon  the  lines  of  old  federalism, 
and  counter  to  the  teachings  of  Jefferson  and  Jackson  and  the  great  fathers 
of  democracy.  And  this  fact  accounts  for  the  utter  failure  of  his  admin 
istration  up  to  this  time.  A  vast  section  of  his  party  in  Congress  would 
not  follow  him  on  these  lines.  This  caused  dissensions  and  utter  inability 
to  legislate  upon  this  question,  as  the  people  had  demanded.  It  also 
accounts  for  the  fact  that  the  democratic  party  has  been  trodden  down  in 
the  dust  of  humiliation  and  defeat.  The  party  can  gain  no  victory  in  the 
future  without  utterly  repudiating  Cleveland's  policy  on  the  money  ques- 


224  AN  AMERICAN  COMMONER. 

tion.  The  party  must  get  back  to  its  old  principles  of  equal  rights  to  all 
and  special  privileges  to  none;  demand  the  restoration  of  the  old  demo 
cratic  bimetallic  standard  that  existed  for  eighty  years  in  our  history.  The 
rights  of  the  sovereign  states  and  the  liberty  of  the  citizen,  as  taught  by 
our  democratic  fathers,  must  be  maintained.  We  must  abandon  our 
fight  for  money  and  moneyed  interests,  and  take  up  the  fight  for  man  and 
the  interests  of  the  people." 

"Mr.  Bland,  there  has  been  a  great  deal  of  newspaper  gossip  and 
surmise  as  to  your  intentions  of  deserting  the  democratic  party  and  leading 
a  bolt  from  its  organization  in  favor  of  a  new  party  in  the  next  presiden 
tial  election.  What  have  you  to  say  to  that?" 

Mr.  Bland  answered  promptly  and  frankly:  "I  am  a  democrat  and 
expect  to  do  everything  in  my  power  as  a  democrat  to  bring  the  party 
back  to  its  old  principles.  It  is  a  critical  period  in  the  history  of  the  dem 
ocratic  party.  I  have  refused  heretofore  to  follow  Mr.  Cleveland  on  the 
money  question.  If  the  democratic  party  puts  up  a  candidate  on  a  plat 
form  in  harmony  with  Mr.  Cleveland's  administration,  I  could  not  con 
sistently  support  him.  I  do  not  say  this  in  any  spirit  of  bolting  or  threat, 
but  I  simply  speak  my  honest  convictions  of  duty,  and  I  believe  voice  the 
intentions  of  two  thirds  of  the  democratic  voters,  especially  of  the  south 
and  west." 

This  interview  defined  the  issue  of  the  campaign — the  same  issue 
against  the  imperial  policies  of  English  commercialism  which  Mr.  Bland 
stood  for  in  1898,  when  the  attempt  was  being  made  to  use  "expansion," 
to  divert  democrats  from  their  opposition  to  foreign  management  of  our 
finances. 

Mr.  Bland  cared  nothing  for  the  "practical  politics"  of  what  he  said, 
but  as  a  matter  of  obvious  fact  the  interview,  considered  merely  from  that 
low  standpoint,  is  most  remarkable.  It  not  only  laid  down  the  lines  on 
which  Mr.  Cleveland  and  the  national  bank  element  would  be  compelled 
to  leave  the  democratic  party,  but  it  took  from  the  republican  party  the 
pretense  of  intense  Americanism  on  which  it  had  made  so  many  cam 
paigns  since  Elaine,  Garfield  and  Harrison  had  taken  up  Henry  Clay's 
"American  policy"  and  the  "home  market"  idea  he  had  involved  with  it. 


Jpr 


MR.  TRUMBULL'S  RESIDENCE  IN  DENVER. 


THOMAS  O.  TOWLES. 


MR.  BLAND  AND  HIS  DAUGHTER  VIRGINIA. 

(From  a  Snap  Shot  Photograph  taken  in  the  fields  at  his  Home  in 

Lebanon.) 


JAMES  T.  TALIAFERRO. 


AN  AMERICAN  COMMONER.  225 

No  party,  forced  to  defend  international  control  of  American  finances,  as 
the  decisive  issue  of  a  national  campaign,  could  at  the  same  time  glorify 
itself  successfully  as  the  exclusive  representative  of  America  against  the 
world  on  the  tariff.  In  fact,  since  this  interview  was  published  and  the 
issues  it  presented  forced,  the  phrases  "American  policy"  and  the  "home 
market"  have  disappeared  from  politics,  and  the  republican  party — so 
violently  anti-British  under  Elaine  and  Garfield,  has  become  under  Messrs. 
McKinley  and  Hanna  the  advocate  of  Anglo-Saxon  unity  and  the  cooper 
ation  of  the  English  government  with  that  of  the  United  States  in  "com 
mercial  expansion." 

So  much  does  it  avail  for  the  making  of  history  if  the  right  man  says 
the  right  thing  at  the  right  time. 


CHAPTER  XXV. 

Bland  as  a  Leader  of  a  Forlorn  Hope. — Forced  into  the  Presidential  Contest  as  the 
Only  Man  on  Whom  the  Democratic  Party  Could  Reorganize. — His  Candidacy  a 
Matter  of  Duty. — His  Nomination  not  Expected  on  Account  of  His  Residence 
in  a  Former  Slave  State. — Popular  Demonstrations  During  His  Lecturing  Tour. 
— Missouri  Conventions  at  Pertle  Springs  and  at  Sedalia. — Formation  of  Bland 
Clubs  in  Missouri. — His  Attitude  Towards  the  Presidency. — Falsity  of  Asser 
tions  that  He  Was  "the  Victim  of  Treachery"  at  Chicago. 

I  HEN  Mr.  Bland  gave  out  the  interview  republished  in  the  last 
chapter,  he  had  decided  that  it  was  necessary  either  that  he 
should  accept  party  leadership  or  give  up  all  hopes  of  bi 
metallism.  He  was  thrust,  at  first  by  the  pressure  of  events 
and  afterwards  by  the  deliberate  action  of  the  advocates  of  the  principles  he 
stood  for,  into  the  leadership  of  a  forlorn  hope.  His  consent  was  not  asked 
and  not  a  word  on  the  subject  of  the  presidency  was  said  to  him  until  after 
he  had  clearly  demonstrated  his  ability  to  force  back  and  hold  in  check  the 
enormous  power  of  capital,  organized  in  support  of  the  policies  of  the 
Cleveland  administration.  With  him,  hopes  of  the  presidency,  if  he  enter 
tained  them  at  all,  were  never  serious  enough  to  be  governing  motives. 
The  work  to  which  he  addressed  himself  was  that  of  "squaring  the  issue" 
so  that  the  people  could  decide. 

"If  they  will  force  the  issues  you  represent  and  nominate  you  on  them, 
they  can  elect  you,  but  I  do  not  think  they  will,"  wrote  an  acquaintance  on 
whose  judgment  he  seemed  sometimes  to  rely,  on  the  rare  occasions  when 
he  himself  was  in  doubt.  It  will  not  be  asserted  here  that  he  accepted  this 
judgment,  for  he  was  not  accustomed  to  define  himself  in  such  connections, 
but  it  can  be  said  with  confidence  that  in  becoming  a  candidate,  he  faced  and 
considered  the  possibility  of  complete  physical  exhaustion  in  addition  to  the 
loss  of  his  small  competency.  He  had  been  publicly  reproached  for  mere 

physical  inertia.     His  unconsciousness  of  the  possibilities  of  his  own  great 

226 


AN  AMERICAN  COMMONER.  227 

intellectual  powers  was  so  complete  that  one  of  the  means  used  to  compel 
him  to  take  a  leadership  no  one  else  conld  take  was  the  public  assertion  that 
with  the  best  analytical  mind  in  Congress,  he  was  "too  lazy  to  use  it"  for 
what  it  was  worth.  It  was  not  known  at  the  time  this  was  uttered  how 
greatly  the  long  struggle  against  the  policies  of  the  Grant  administration 
and  the  not  less  arduous  contest  against  the  international  combination  of 
monometallists  organized  after  the  Franco-Prussian  war  had  sapped  his 
strength.  He  was  husbanding  his  resources  for  emergencies  and  using 
them  at  the  expense  of  his  vitality,  when  the  call  was  made  on  him  to  put 
forth  all  his  strength  of  mind  .and  body  in  what  for  him  seemed  inevitably 
a  losing  fight.  He  was  called  upon  to  become,  seemingly,  a  f actionist ;  to 
break  away  from  friends  in  Missouri,  in  the  east  and  elsewhere  whom  he 
loved  and  on  whose  judgment,  as  long  as  it  was  possible  to  do  so,  he  pre 
ferred  to  rely  in  "practical  politics"  rather  than  on  his  own.  He  was  a 
citizen  of  what  had  been  a  slave  state- — of  what  among  the  slave  states  had 
been  more  closely  identified  than  any  other  with  the  violent  struggle  which 
immediately  preceded  the  Civil  war.  The  manifest  probabilities  on  this 
account  alone  were  two  to  one  against  his  nomination  in  a  democratic  con 
vention,  and  at  the  crisis  which  forced  his  leadership  against  Mr.  Cleve 
land,  such  manifest  probabilities  were  not  left  out  of  consideration.  Even 
had  he  been  nominated,  it  would  have  been  to  lead  a  party  which  had  been 
suddenly  reformed  in  presence  of  the  enemy  after  having  been  completely 
disorganized.  In  such  a  contest  the  little  money  Mr.  Bland  had  saved  for 
his  family  out  of  his  salary  would  have  disappeared  at  once  and  the  proba 
bilities  were  that  even  under  the  most  favorable  conditions  he  would  be  left 
penniless  and  probabiy  an  invalid.  Some  of  these  probabilities  he  discussed 
from  time  to  time  with  Mrs.  Bland,  but  they  did  not  deter  him  when,  in 
1893  a  handful  of  "extremists"  and  "cranks"  who  had  determined  to  do  at 
any  cost  what  could  be  done  to  check  the  reactionary  tendencies  of  the  plu 
tocracy  which  sought  to  control  the  Cleveland  administration,  began — not 
urging,  but  actually  crowding  Mr.  Bland  into  the  breach.  He  did  not  re- 


228  AN  AMERICAN  COMMONER. 

mon strata.  He  did  not  assent.  His  response  was  first  publicly  under 
stood  when  he  made  his  speech,  "At  the  Parting  of  the  Ways."  From  that 
time  on,  it  was  manifest  that  the  people  had  a  leader  whom  no  considera 
tion  of  partisanship,  of  private  friendship,  of  personal  gain  or  loss,  would 
swerve  from  his  purposes.  In  their  own  vernacular,  they  saw  that  he 
"was  not  a  quitter,"  and  as  they  are  continually  seeking  to  find  some  one 
they  can  trust,  some  one  who  is  "not  a  quitter"  to  stand  for  them,  to  say 
what  they  can  not  say,  to  do  for  them  what  they  do  not  know  how  to  do 
for  themselves,  they  relied  on  him  with  pathetic  devotion.  Nothing  is 
more  touching  than  the  love  of  an  often-deceived  and  long-oppressed  people 
for  the  man  whom  at  the  crisis  they  see  to  be  their  friend,  honest,  simple, 
and  brave.  They  recognized  these  qualities  in  Mr.  Bland.  They  knew 
that  he  at  least  was  not  a  schemer,  seeking  to  market  their  confidence  for 
money  or  preferment.  In  spite  of  the  abuse  he  challenged — and  indeed 
because  of  it — they  gave  him  their  full  confidence.  He  was  never  an  or 
ganizer  or  a  "mixer."  Men  who  have  the  analytical  faculty  strongly  de 
veloped,  can  not  be,  in  the  nature  of  things.  Yet  so  great  was  his  moral 
force  that  within  less  than  four  years'  time  a  party  so  disorganized  that 
it  was  not  certain  of  carrying  any  state  in  the  Union — for  in  1894  it  could 
no  longer  count  even  on  Missouri — was  reorganized  and  given  such  vitality 
that  in  1896,  it  polled,  under  the  most  unfavorable  circumstances,  a  larger 
vote  than  had  ever  been  polled  before  that  year  for  any  presidential  candi 
date. 

The  immediate  cause  of  this  was  the  finesse  which  took  advantage  of 
the  disorganization  occasioned  by  Mr.  Cleveland's  policies  to  center  repub 
lican  efforts  on  Mr.  Eland's  district  so  that  he  might  be  held  up  to  the 
country  at  large  as  responsible  for  what  he  had  done  everything  possible 
to  prevent.  In  spite  of  the  maxim  of  law  and  of  political  economy,  that 
no  man  is  allowed  to  take  advantage  of  his  own  tort,  Mr.  Cleveland's  sup 
porters,  after  their  policies  had  taken  the  whole  country  from  the  demo 
cratic  party,  took  advantage  of  Mr.  Eland's  defeat  in  the  "off  year"  to 


AN  AMERICAN  COMMONER.  229 

demonstrate  once  more  to  their  own  comfort,  that  "the  free  silver  lunacy 
did  it"  and  that  the  lunacy  was  now  "harmless  forever." 

After  his  defeat,  Mr.  Bland  was  forced  from  his  farm  to  the  lecture 
platform.  He  traveled  through  the  west  and  south,  speaking  on  questions 
of  the  day,  and  more  especially  on  bimetallism,  to  audiences  whose  enthu 
siasm  suggested  for  the  first  time  the  power  of  the  popular  impulses  which 
were  to  produce  the  great  upheaval  of  1896.  In  Colorado  and  the  north 
west,  which  had  so  lately  been  republican  strongholds,  the  spirit  of  the  new 
politics  showed  itself  as  a  force  paramount  to  all  partisanship.  What  may 
be  called  the  first  "overt  act"  in  the  revolution  in  the  northwest  had  come 
under  the  Harrison  administration  in  a  motion  from  the  northwest  in  the 
Senate  to  substitute  a  free  coinage  bill  for  the  Harrison  "Force  Bill"  for 
the  control  of  southern  elections.  Subsequent  events  had  made  this  spirit 
more  determined.  Mr.  Cleveland's  proclamation  against  silver  in  1893, 
and  his  policy  of  calling  money  from  commercial  and  industrial  investment 
by  bond  issues,  had  completed  the  prostration  of  the  west.  The  "Coxey 
army,"  which  he  drove  off  the  grass  at  Washington  with  such  indignation 
was  a  sadly  ludicrous  manifestation  of  what  a  policy  of  restriction  means 
in  the  presence  of  stringency.  The  panic  under  Van  Buren  had  been 
checked  by  liberal  issues  of  treasury  notes.  Mr.  Cleveland — who  might 
have  claimed  this  as  a  New  York  precedent — called  money  from  western 
and  southern  investment  by  bond  issues  in  order  to  prevent  what  he  re 
garded  as  a  too  liberal  supply  of  currency — this  at  a  time  when  machinery 
and  all  the  improved  processes  of  civilization  had  so  immensely  increased 
the  possibilities  of  products  to  be  distributed  that  the  existing  supply  of 
cash  from  the  mintage  of  all  the  gold  and  silver  in  the  world  would,  no 
doubt,  have  been  inadequate  without  at  least  thirty  per  cent,  of  credit  cur 
rency.  But  Mr.  Cleveland's  supporters,  demanding  ninety-five  per  cent,  of 
credits  on  which  they  could  take  toll,  and  insisting  on  five  per  cent  of  cash 
as  adequate  for  their  system,  scorned  anything  less  than  the  full  possibili 
ties  of  what  they  imagined  to  be  their  opportunities.  As  they  issued  bonds 


230  AN  AMERICAN  COMMONER. 

for  the  New  York  and  London  markets,  the  west  rallied  on  Bland.  In 
Missouri  where  Mr.  Cleveland  had  what  seemed  to  be  a  compact  organiza 
tion,  it  vanished,  and  outside  of  the  city  of  St.  Louis,  there  was  scarcely  a 
voice  of  opposition  to  the  policies  for  which  Mr.  Bland  stood  when  it  was 
proposed  to  call  a  convention  at  Pertle  Springs  to  formulate  them.  This 
convention  held  in  August,  1895,*  made  the  attitude  of  Missouri  so  clear 
that  after  it  Mr.  Cleveland  had  no  declared  following  in  the  state,  even 
among  those  who  had  opposed  the  calling  of  the  convention,  and  in  1893 
had  attempted  to  control  the  state  so  as  to  undo  the  work  which  in  1892 
had  created  a  democratic  majority  in  the  electoral  college  without  New 
York. 

Soon  after  this  an  organization  was  formed  in  the  state  to  "boom" 
Mr.  Bland  for  the  presidency.  It  was  in  the  main  spontaneous  and  alto 
gether  gratuitous  as  far  as  he  was  concerned,  though  letters  written  to  him 
at  the  time  show  artistic  efforts  to  commit  him  to  co-operation  in  seeking 
the  place.  All  such  efforts  he  met  with  the  quiet  dignity  which  character 
ized  his  life.  He  was  almost  universally  known  in  Missouri  as  "Dick," 
and  Missourians  spoke  of  him  as  familiarly  as  of  a  member  of  their  own 
immediate  families,  but  from  the  first,  they  had  recognized  fully  that  he 
was  not  one  of  those  who  can  be  slapped  on  the  back  and  propitiated  to 

*In  speaking  of  what  preceded  and  followed  the  Pertle  Springs  convention,  Senator  F.  M.  Cockrell 
said  in  his  eulogy  of  Mr.  Bland,  delivered  in  the  Senate,  April  9,  1900:  "After  President  Cleveland's  veto 
of  the  Bland  Seigniorage  bill  bimetallism  became  an  exciting  question,  and  its  friends  began  an  earnest, 
vigorous  campaign  to  secure  delegates  to  the  national  democratic  convention  in  1896  who  could  neither 
be  corrupted  nor  intimidated  to  a  surrender  of  that  principle. 

"It  was  believed  in  Missouri  that  some  members  of  the  state  central  committee  were  not  friendly  to 
the  free  and  unlimited  coinage  of  the  standard  silver  dollar  equally  with  gold  at  the  old  ratio.  Many 
meetings  were  held  and  a  state  democratic  convention  was  called,  by  order  of  the  state  central  committee, 
to  meet  at  Pertle  Springs,  Mo.,  on  the  sixth  day  of  August,  1895.  The  convention  met,  with  strong  dele 
gations  from  almost  every  county  in  the  state,  made  Mr.  Bland  chairman,  and  passed  resolutions  strongly 
favoring  free  silver  coinage  equally  with  gold.  There  was  in  the  convention  a  strong  feeling  to  indorse 
Mr.  Bland  for  the  nomination  for  the  presidency  in  1896.  This  movement  was  strongly  opposed  by  Mr. 
Bland,  and  no  action  in  that  direction  was  taken. 

"The  feeling,  however,  continued  to  grow  in  strength,  notwithstanding  Mr.  Bland  took  the  position 
that  it  was  not  wise  for  Missouri  to  have  a  presidential  candidate.  His  sincerity  was  never  questioned, 
but  he  could  not  control  his  friends. 

"When  the  state  convention  assembled  at  Sedalia,  Mo.,  on  the  fifteenth  day  of  April,  1896,  the  dele 
gates  were  almost  unanimous  for  Mr.  Bland  as  one  of  the  delegates  at  large  to  the  Chicago  convention 
and  for  indorsing  him  as  the  choice  of  Missouri  for  the  nomination  for  president. 


AN  AMERICAN  COMMONER.  231 

more  intimate  acquaintance  by  an  invitation  to  drink.  He  had  no  personal 
vanity,  and  no  man  was  more  approachable  than  he,  but,  though  he  did  not 
assert  his  superiority,  his  quiet  failure  to  respond  to  appeals  which  assumed 
egotism  as  latent  in  him,  impressed  every  one  who  approached  him  with  a 
sense  of  his  natural  dignity. 

His  attitude  towards  the  presidency  may  be  stated  here  with  assurance 
of  representing  him  correctly. 

He  had  never  sought  party  leadership  except  as  it  was  necessary  to 
do  so  in  forcing  issues  for  principle.  In  the  politics  of  Missouri,  he  had 
been  satisfied  to  do  his  work  in  the  House  of  Representatives,  refusing  to 
seek  even  a  senatorship,  which  he  might  easily  have  had,  which,  indeed  he 
would  have  accepted  without  hesitation  could  it  have  come  to  him  without 
retiring  either  Senator  Vest  or  Senator  Cockrell — men  whom  he  regarded 
as  fit  for  the  place  and  fully  capable  of  representing  the  state. 

He  looked  at  the  presidency  in  much  the  same  way,  as  a  place  of  trust 
where  he  would  have  the  power  of  the  people  in  carrying  out  policies  which 
he  believed  to  represent  their  rights  and  their  will.  When  he  was  forced 
into  leadership  in  1893,  ^  was  tne  ^rst  time  in  his  life  that  he  had  been 
called  upon  to  isolate  himself  openly  from  those  with  whom  he  had  co 
operated  during  the  two  decades  of  civil  war  politics  which  followed  his 
election  in  the  Greeley  campaign.  Although  in  1892  he  fully  represented 

"Mr.  Eland's  position  was  characteristic.    He  said: 

11  'If  I  am  the  candidate  of  this  state  for  the  presidential  nomination,  it  would  not  be  becoming  in  me 
to  go  as  a  member  of  the  delegation  from  this  state  to  the  convention.' 

"He  was  consequently  not  chosen  as  a  delegate,  but  was  unanimously  indorsed  by  the  convention  as 
the  candidate  of  Missouri  for  the  presidency. 

"He  returned  to  his  home,  near  Lebanon,  Mo.,  and  remained  there  until  after  the  national,  conven 
tion  had  made  its  nomination,  refusing  the  importunities  of  his  friends  to  attend  meetings  anywhere  or 
to  do  aught  that  might  be  construed  as  electioneering  for  himself  or  promotive  of  his  candidacy  for  nom 
ination.  His  candidacy  was  not  of  his  own  seeking.  The  good  people  of  Missouri  had  seen  distinguished 
gentlemen  of  acknowledged  abilities  and  high  character,  eminent  and  influential  in  party  councils  and 
intrusted  with  high  official  positions,  who  for  years  had  been  outspoken  advocates  of  bimetallism  and 
professed  friends  of  silver,  turn  their  backs  upon  their  past  records,  and  to  the  money  power  and  execu 
tive  power,  freely  exerted,  'crook  the  pregnant  hinges  of  the  knee  where  thrift  may  follow  fawning.' 

"Knowing  Mr.  Eland's  sincerity  and  honesty  of  purpose,  his  uncompromising  integrity,  his  moral 
courage,  and  unyielding  firmness,  and  his  lifelong  devotion  to  and  advocacy  of  the  restoration  of  bimet- 
tallism,  they  naturally  regarded  him  as  the  personification  of  that  monetary  principle."— Congressional 
Record,  April  9,  1900. 


232  AN  AMERICAN  COMMONER. 

the  issues  which  gave  the  democratic  party  the  greatest  victory  of  its  his 
tory,  he  stood  in  1893  as  one  of  a  handful  who,  wherever  they  openly  ap 
peared,  were  denounced  as  "fanatics"  and  "dangerous  men,"  and,  if 
possible,  silenced  by  threats  of  political  ruin — who,  where  this  proved  in 
effective,  were  attacked  on  the  theory  that  no  man  whose  means  of  sub 
sistence  is  controlled  against  him  can  long  maintain  an  effective  struggle 
for  principle  of  any  kind.  A  more  hopeless — and  consequently  a  more 
disinterested — fight  was  never  made  in  American  politics  than  that  Mr. 
Bland  opened  on  the  Cleveland  administration  when  it  had  seemingly  at  its 
back,  and  presumably  represented  by  Mr.  Cleveland,  the  forces  which  had 
just  achieved  the  unprecedented  victory  of  1892.  Yet  if  Mr.  Bland  hesi 
tated  at  all,  if  he  required  to  be  compelled  by  force  of  circumstances  to  go 
where  he  might  not  have  gone  otherwise,  it  was  only  because  of  his  habitual 
unwillingness  to  thrust  himself  forward  and  of  his  desire  to  make  peace, 
compromise  and  patience  serve  ends  which  to  others  seem  attainable  only 
by  violent  contention.  But  when  he  saw  what  he  regarded  as  the  cause  of 
civilization  about  to  be  sacrificed,  he  did  not  stop  to  ask  what  the  conse 
quences  would  be  to  himself  in  loss  of  friends,  party  standing  or  position. 
He  accepted  the  issue  with  Mr.  Cleveland,  and  when  it  made  him  logically 
the  only  presidential  candidate  on  whom,  during  the  next  three  years,  it 
was  possible  for  the  democratic  party  to  reform  its  completely  demoralized 
lines,  he  accepted  the  situation  as  freely  as  he  had  accepted  the  initial  re 
sponsibility  of  making  the  first  open  stand  against  Mr.  Cleveland. 

The  letter  referred  to  above,  in  which  it  was  suggested  that  his  nom 
ination  was  improbable,  he  did  not  discuss  with  the  writer  of  it,  nor  did  he 
ever  assume  that  he  was  being  treacherously  dealt  with  by  this  man  or  that 
as  was  often  charged  at  the  time.  He  received  letters  of  warning,  such 
as  no  doubt  are  written  to  all  presidential  candidates,  but  they  did  not 
change  his  relations  to  those  against  whom  he  was  warned.  Several  years 
later  when  he  saw  manifested  in  another  way  the  reality  of  the  methods 
of  one  of  those  against  whom  he  had  been  warned  by  letter  prior  to  the 


AN  AMERICAN  COMMONER.  233 

Chicago  convention  of  1896,  he  smiled  and  said :  "That's  his  idea  of  poli 
tics."  That  was  all.  He  accepted  men  as  he  found  them,  judged  them 
by  the  results  of  ideas  dictated  by  the  habits  of  their  past  and  then  dis 
missed  them  to  the  judgment  of  their  own  future. 

It  can  not  be  too  strongly  emphasized,  however,  that  he  was  not  the 
"victim  of  treachery"  in  1896.  Missouri  was  for  him.  The  west  and  south 
were  for  him.  All  recognized  that  he  alone  had  made  possible  that  new 
organization  of  the  party  of  which  the  Chicago  convention  was  a  manifes 
tation.  The  one  thing  which  prevented  his  nomination  was  his  residence 
in  Missouri — a  southwestern  "slave  state."  Had  he  been  a  resident  of 
Nebraska  his  nomination  would  have  been  made  unanimously.  As  the 
man  who,  when  Mr.  Bland  made  his  "parting  of  the  ways"  speech  in  1893, 
had  seconded  it  for  the  northwest  and  above  everything  else  as  the  represen 
tative  of  the  northwestern  balance  of  power  against  the  "hegemony"  of  the 
lower  wards  of  New  York  City  as  they  represent  international  commercial 
imperialism,  Mr.  Bryan  was  nominated — not  as  a  result  of  mere  sudden 
enthusiasm,  but  of  the  forces  which  had  been  operating  since  the  south 
withdrew  its  opposition  to  the  admisson  of  the  northwestern  states.  Mr. 
Eland's  work  made  "the  logical  candidate"  a  representative  democrat — 
not  from  Missouri,  but  from  Illinois  or  Nebraska.  No  one  recognized 
this  more  fully  than  Mr.  Bland  himself.  He  asked  nothing  for  himself. 
In  less  than  four  years  he  had  wrested  the  organization  of  his  party  from 
an  administration  which  at  the  beginning  had  reduced  him  almost  to  a 
minority  of  one.  He  had  done  a  man's  work  so  well,  so  manfully,  that 
the  office  which  had  been  filled  by  Van  Buren,  Fillmore,  Tyler,  Polk 
and  Grant  could  have  added  nothing  to  the  dignity  of  his  simple  man 
hood. 


CHAPTER  XXVI. 

The  Chicago  Platform  Against  a  Corporation  Currency  and  Federal  Invasion  of  the 
Province  of  the  States. — These  Sections  Forced  by  Mr.  Cleveland's  Attempt  to 
Undo  the  Results  of  the  Campaign  of  1892  so  as  to  Restore  the  New  York-Indiana 
Balance  of  Power. — Great  Determination  Shown  by  Mr.  Cleveland  in  This 
Attempt. — Cleveland  and  Bayard  Compared. — Bayard  an  Anti-Federalist. — The 
Democratic  Party  at  its  Last  Gasp  When  Restored  by  the  Chicago  Platform. — 
The  Balloting  for  President  at  Chicago. — Mr.  Sewall  as  a  Compromise  on  the 
Platform. — The  Action  of  the  Convention  Deliberate. 


HE  democratic  national  convention  of  1896  met  at  Chicago  on 
July   7,   and  two  days  later  adopted  the  platform  which 
resulted  in  the  bolt  of  Mr.  Cleveland  and  those  who  be 
lieved  with  him  in  the  issuance  and  control  of  the  currency 
by  national  banks  or  other  corporations. 

The  platform  represented  the  issues  as  they  had  been  outlined  by  Mr. 
Bland  in  his  Enquirer  interview  and  in  his  speeches  in  Congress.  It 
was  adopted  after  correspondence  preceding  the  convention  between  Mr. 
Bland  and  Mr.  Bryan,  with  others  interested  in  the  reformation  of  politics. 
It  contained  sections  expressing  unqualified  disapproval  of  bond  issues 
in  time  of  peace  and  of  national  bank  control  of  the  currency.  It  had 
been  suggested  in  advance  of  the  convention  that  if  the  section  against 
national  bank  control  of  the  currency  were  adopted,  Mr.  Cleveland  and 
his  administration  would  relieve  the  party,  as  far  as  it  was  possible  to  do  so, 
of  responsibility  for  their  action.  As  these  two  sections  without  doubt 
led  Mr.  Cleveland  to  "bolt,"  they  may  be  quoted  here  as  a  suggestion  of 
what  was  the  fundamental  issue  of  the  campaign. 

We  are  opposed  to  the  issuing  of  interest-bearing  bonds  of  the  United 
States,  in  time  of  peace  and  condemn  the  trafficking  with  banking  syndi 
cates  which  in  exchange  for  bonds  and  at  an  enormous  profit  to  them 
selves  supply  the  federal  treasury  with  gold  to  maintain  the  policy  of 
gold  monometallism. 

234 


AN  AMERICAN  COMMONER.  235 

Congress  alone  has  the  power  to  coin  and  issue  money,  and  President 
Jackson  declared  that  this  power  could  not  be  delegated  to  corporations 
or  individuals.  We,  therefore,  denounce  the  issuance  of  notes  intended 
to  circulate  as  money  by  national  banks  as  in  derogation  of  the  Constitu 
tion,  and  we  demand  that  all  paper  which  is  made  a  legal  tender  for  public 
and  private  debts,  or  which  is  receivable  for  duties  to  the  United  States, 
shall  be  issued  by  the  government  of  the  United  States,  and  shall  be  re 
deemable  in  coin. 

These  sections  forced  Mr.  Cleveland's  withdrawal.  They  were  not 
adopted  maliciously,  but  as  a  matter  of  necessity,  and  with  them,  as  a 
matter  of  the  same  necessity,  was  adopted  this  repudiation  of  Mr.  Cleve 
land's  action  in  sending  troops  into  Illinois  without  the  call  of  the  gov 
ernor  : 

We  denounce  arbitrary  interference  by  federal  authorities  in  local 
affairs  as  a  violation  of  the  Constitution  of  the  United  States,  and  a  crime 
against  free  institutions,  and  we  especially  object  to  government  by  injunc 
tion  as  a  new  and  highly  dangerous  form  of  oppression  by  which  federal 
judges  in  contempt  of  the  laws  of  the  states  and  rights  of  citizens,  become  at 
once  legislators,  judges  and  executioners,  and  we  approve  the  bill  passed  at 
the  last  session  of  the  United  States  Senate,  and  now  pending  in  the  House 
of  Representatives,  relative  to  contempts  in  federal  courts  and  providing  for 
trials  by  jury  in  certain  cases  of  contempt. 

To  understand  what  these  sections  mean,  we  must  once  more  recall  the 
fact  that  largely  as  a  result  of  Mr.  Eland's  work  in  breaking  down  civil 
war  sectionalism  in  the  west  and  south,  Mr.  Cleveland  had  been  elected 
in  1892  by  a  majority  of  the  votes  of  the  electoral  college  before  New 
York  was  reached ;  that  this  was  done  by  placing  Illinois  in  the  position  of 
prominence  which  for  twenty  years  had  been  accorded  to  New  York; 
that  Mr.  Cleveland's  own  nomination  was  the  only  concession  made  to 
New  York  in  the  campaign;  that  the  campaign  itself  was  made  on  principles 
he  did  not  approve  and  on  plans  against  which  he  protested ;  that  as  a  result 
of  it  a  democratic  governor  had  been  elected  in  Illinois  for  the  first  time 
since  the  Civil  war  began;  that  Mr.  Cleveland  had  not  only  overridden 
this  democratic  governor,  but  with  all  the  skill  and  resources  at  his  com- 


336  AN  AMERICAN  COMMONER. 

mand  had  endeavored  to  undo  the  work  of  the  campaign  of  1890  and  1892. 
As  president  during  his  second  term  he  showed  rare  qualities  of  courage 
and  individuality.  Could  any  force  of  individuality  or  of  organization  or 
of  resources  have  undone  the  already  accomplished  work  of  a  great  and 
beneficent  revolution  in  the  practical  politics  of  America,  he  would  have 
succeeded.  No  other  man  could  have  done  more  than  he  did  in  support 
of  his  principles.  It  is  hard  to  point  out  any  other  one  man  of  his  genera 
tion  who  could  have  done  so  much.  Mr.  Bayard,  of  Delaware,  a  man 
of  the  highest  ability  and  of  untainted  virtue,  was,  like  Mr.  Cleveland,  a 
whig,  by  birth  and  tradition  a  representative  of  the  aristocratic  theory  of 
government.  But  he  was  by  no  means  so  pronounced  a  federalist  as  Mr. 
Cleveland.  Indeed,  in  spite  of  his  family  traditions  of  federalism,  he  had 
strongly  inclined,  during  his  whole  public  career,  to  the  theory  of  state 
sovereignty  which  Jefferson  had  defined  in  the  Kentucky  resolutions. 
In  1884,  when  he  was  supported  against  Mr.  Cleveland  as  a  means  of 
forcing  the  issue  of  tariff  reform  more  strongly  than  Mr.  Cleveland  seemed 
to  think  advisable,  it  was  chiefly  because  of  the  publication  by  the  New 
York  Sun  of  a  strongly  anti-federal  speech  made  by  him  in  Delaware  at 
the  beginning  of  the  movement  of  troops  against  the  south,  that  he  failed 
to  secure  a  stronger  eastern  support.  No  other  member  of  the  Cleveland 
administration  could  be  compared  to  Mr.  Bayard  in  intellectual  grasp,  but 
he  lacked  Mr.  Cleveland's  driving  force  of  will,  and  it  is  safe  to  say  that 
neither  he  nor  any  other  man  in  public  life  could  have  succeeded  where 
Mr.  Cleveland  himself  failed. 

As  a  result  of  Mr.  Cleveland's  determined  effort  to  restore  the  political 
conditions  which  had  prevailed  in  the  electoral  college  prior  to  the  change 
forced  by  Illinois  and  Kansas,  the  democratic  party  was  apparently  at  its 
last  gasp.  No  matter  what  came  of  reasserting  the  principles  through  which 
Illinois  had  been  carried  and  the  west  taken  from  the  republican  party,  it 
could  not  be  worse  for  the  party  organization  than  the  conditions  which 
the  "off-year  election"  had  demonstrated — conditions  suggested  by  the  fact 


AN  AMERICAN  COMMONER.  237 

that  in  Missouri  in  1894,  eight  democratic  nominees  for  Congress  had 
been  defeated  as  a  result  of  party  disorganization.  As  Mr.  Bland  was 
one  of  these,  the  result  was  attributed  to  popular  disapproval  of  his  oppo 
sition  to  administration  policies,  and  it  is  said  that  up  to  the  very  time  of 
the  adoption  of  the  platform,  Mr.  Cleveland's  representatives  expected  to 
control  the  convention.  If  they  expected  "pairing"  from  delegates  who 
opposed  them,  it  had  been  anticipated  from  the  other  side  also,  and  pro 
vided  against.  As  a  result  of  work  inaugurated  by  Senator  Harris,  of 
Tennessee,  a  convention  had  assembled  such  as  had  not  been  seen  before 
during  the  generation.  It  was  largely  composed  of  men  who  do  not 
attend  conventions  at  all  except  in  great  emergencies,  and  though  among 
the  delegates  at  large  there  were  the  usual  number  of  experts,  who  support 
themselves  by  the  "ground  floor  privileges"  of  politics,  the  body  of  the  con 
vention  consisted  of  men  of  Mr.  Eland's  class  who  mean  what  they  say 
and  believe  that  government  should  be  actually  an  expression  of  the  pop 
ular  will.  They  came  determined  to  achieve  results.  Nothing  less  than 
the  adoption  of  such  a  platform  as  was  adopted  v/ould  have  satisfied  them. 
When  it  was  adopted,  and  they  had  voted  down  a  resolution  indorsing 
Mr.  Cleveland,  they  went  home  and  gave  it  6,319,000  votes  as  against 
5,554,000  votes  polled  for  Mr.  Cleveland  in  1892 — that  being  the  largest 
vote  ever  polled  in  the  United  States  up  to  that  time.  When  we  remem 
ber  that  this  was  done  without  a  campaign  fund,  with  practically  no  work 
ing  machinery  and  in  presence  of  opposition  representing  the  combined 
capitalistic  influence  of  England  and  America,  it  is  possible  to  get  some  sug 
gestion  of  the  moral  forces  Mr.  Bland  had  called  into  active  operation 
against  plutocracy. 

The  account  of  the  balloting  for  president  given  by  Senator  Cockrell 
in  the  Congressional  Record  of  April  10,  1900,  is  concise  and  accurate 
The  following  report  of  the  proceedings  was  adapted  from  it : 

Most  of  the  nominations  for  the  presidency  were  made  on  the  night  of 


238  AN  AMERICAN  COMMONER. 

July  9,  and  the  remainder  on  the  morning  of  July  10,  when  the  balloting 
began. 

Fourteen  distinguished  gentlemen  received  votes  on  the  first  ballot, 
the  result  of  which  for  the  seven  receiving  the  highest  number  of  votes  was 
announced  as  follows:  Richard  P.  Bland,  235;  William  J.  Bryan,  13?; 
Robert  E.  Pattison,  9?;  J.  C.  S.  Blackburn,  82;  Horace  Boies,  67;  John  R. 
McLean,  54,  and  Claude  Matthews,  3?. 

The  result  of  the  second  ballot  for  the  three  receiving  the  highest 
number  of  votes  was  as  follows :  Bland,  281 ;  Bryan,  197,  and  Pattison, 
100. 

The  result  of  the  third  ballot  for  the  two  receiving  the  highest  number 
of  votes  was:  Bland,  291;  Bryan,  219. 

The  fourth  ballot  resulted  in  241  for  Bland  and  280  for  Bryan. 

At  the  beginning  of  the  fifth  ballot  one  of  the  delegates  at  large  from 
Missouri  read  the  following  letter  from  Mr.  Bland: 

"I  wish  it  to  be  understood  that  I  do. not  desire  the  nomination  unless 
it  is  the  judgment  of  the  free  silver  delegates  that  I  would  be  the  strongest 
candidate.  If  it  should  at  any  time  appear  that  my  candidacy  is  the  least 
obstruction  to  the  nomination  of  any  candidate  who  is  acceptable  to  the 
free  coinage  delegates  in  the  convention,  or  one  more  acceptable  to  a  ma 
jority  of  these  delegates  than  myself,  I  wish  my  name  at  once  uncondi 
tionally  withdrawn  from  further  consideration.  I  am  willing  to  waive 
the  state  instructions  for  me,  if  need  be,  and  let  the  free  silver  delegates 
decide  the  whole  matter.  The  cause  must  be  put  above  the  man." 

Mr.  Eland's  name  was  then  withdrawn  and  the  vote  of  Missouri  cast 
for  Mr.  Bryan,  the  gifted  and  glorious  son  of  Nebraska.* 

The  nominations  for  the  vice-presidency  were  made  on  July  n.  Mr. 
Bland  on  the  first  ballot,  without  having  been  placed  in  nomination  and 


*To  what  is  here  adapted  from  Senator  Cockrell,  it  needs  only  to  be  added  that  the  managers  of  the 
preliminaries  of  the  convention  had  taken  what  seems  to  have  been  considerable  pains  to  secure  deliber 
ate  action  in  the  balloting.  A  letter  had  been  written  to  Mr.  Bland  himself  protesting  against  what  his 
friends  in  a  neighboring  state  were  doing  on  their  own  motion  to  secure  positive  instruction  for  him.  Mr. 
Bland,  who  destroyed  most  of  his  letters  of  this  character,  left  this  on  file  among  others  somewhat  similar. 
In  response  to  it  he  sent  a  despatch  cautioning  his  friends,  as  requested.  This  letter,  written  from  St. 
Louis,  June  IT,  1896,  said  among  other  things:  "I  think  the  greatest  danger  you  will  have  to  face  be 
tween  now  and  the  meeting  of  the  national  convention  is  the  overzealous  indiscretion  of  men  inexperi 
enced  in  politics  making  a  mess  of  things,  in  what  they  imagine  to  be  an  effort  to  further  your  interests. 
I  have  tried  to  impress  upon  Allen,  Rickey  and  the  rest  that  the  wise  policy  is  to  avoid  placing  you  in  a 
position  of  antagonism  to  any  local  favorite,  but  in  such  cases  to  conciliate  the  favorite's  friends  and  en 
deavor  to  make  you  second  choice." 

In  spite  of  this  caution,  of  Mr.  Eland's  telegram  and  of  "local  favorites"  the  state  in  question  insisted 
on  instructing  for  him,  but  as  Senator  Cockrell  indicates,  "fourteen  distinguished  gentlemen  received 
votes  on  the  first  ballot."  This  seems  sufficient  to  illustrate  whatever  arrangements  were  made  prior  to 
the  assembling  of  the  convention. 


AN  AMERICAN  COMMONER.  239 

with  the  votes  of  Missouri  cast  for  others,  received  62  votes. 

On  the  second  ballot,  when  many  votes  were  being  cast  for  Mr.  Bland 
and  Missouri  was  called,  the  spokesman  of  the  Missouri  delegation  said : 
"The  state  of  Missouri  presented  the  name  of  one  of  its  citizens  for  the 
presidential  nomination.  In  the  wisdom  of  this  convention  another  was 
selected.  The  delegation  has  no  authority  to  present  the  name  of  that 
citizen  for  the  second  place  upon  the  ticket.  If  it  is  done  by  this  conven 
tion,  it  must  be  done  of  its  own  accord,  without  solicitation  by  the  Mis 
souri  delegation — "  and  cast  the  votes  of  Missouri  for  other  names. 

On  the  second  ballot  294  votes  were  given  to  Mr.  Bland.  On  the 
.third  ballot  255  votes  were  given  to  Mr.  Bland.  After  the  announcement 
of  the  third  ballot,  further  balloting  for  Mr.  .Bland  as  a  candidate  for 
vice-president  was  stopped  by  the  receipt  of  a  telegram  sent  by  him  to  be 
read  to  the  convention.  It  was  submitted  accordingly  by  the  Missouri 
delegation.  In  it  Mr.  Bland  said  that  he  thought  it  "unwise  and  impolitic 
to  nominate  both  candidates  from  the  west  side  of  the  Mississippi."  He 
requested  the  delegation  to  assure  the  convention  of  his  hearty  approval  of 
the  nomination  of  Mr.  Bryan  and  of  his  hope  that  the  one  object  in  making 
the  nomination  for  vice-president  would  be  to  strengthen  the  ticket.  He 
prohibited  the  further  use  of  his  name  in  the  balloting  and  it  was  dropped 
accordingly.  The  balloting  then  proceeded  with  the  issue  between  Mr. 
John  R.  McLean,  of  Ohio,  and  Mr.  Arthur  Sewall,  of  Maine.  A  telegram 
was  read  from  Mr.  McLean  protesting  against  the  use  of  his  name,  and 
the  nomination  of  Mr.  Sewall  followed  on  the  fifth  ballot.  He  was  well 
known  in  Maine  as  an  amiable  gentleman  of  unblemished  reputation,  a 
capitalist,  promoter  and  national  banker  by  profession.  His  nomination 
as  a  representative  of  a  hopelessly  republican  state  has  never  been  ac 
counted  for,  but  it  was  probably  influenced  to  some  extent  by  the  feeling 
almost  universal  among  political  experts  in  all  American  parties  that 
whenever  a  platform  of  decided  principles,  candidly  stated,  is  adopted  at 
least  one  of  the  candidates  placed  on  it  ought  to  be  notoriously  identified 
with  principles  clearly  antagonistic  to  it.  While  Mr.  Sewall  was  an  ad 
vocate  of  free  coinage,  holding  personal  opinions  which  may  not  have  been 


240  AN  AMERICAN  COMMONER. 

at  all  antagonistic  to  the  platform,  his  business  career  represented  a  con 
tradiction  of  it,  and  his  nomination,  so  far  as  it  had  any  effect  at  all,  served 
to  break  the  force  of  Mr.  Eland's  work  and  to  prevent  Mr.  Bryan  from 
"squaring"  effectively  the  only  issues  on  which  he  could  have  been 
elected.* 


*Full  details  of  the  balloting  both  for  president  and  vice-president  are  given  in  Mr.  Bryan's  admir 
able  book,  "The  First  Battle"  (chapters  X  to  XII  inclusive).  In  concluding  chapter  XI,  Mr.  Bryan 
writes:  "It  gives  me  pleasure  to  testify  to  the  fact  that  those  who  were  prominent  in  the  contest,  for  the 
presidential  nomination  gave  loyal  and  enthusiastic  support  to  the  ticket.  Mr.  Bland,  whose  vote  was 
next  to  my  own,  devoted  himself  to  the  cause  with  voice  and  pen.  Mr.  Blackburn  visited  all  parts  of  the 
Union  and  responded  to  every  call.  Mr.  Boies  did  effective  work  upon  the  stump  during  the  entire 
campaign.  Mr.  McLean,  as  a  member  of  the  executive  committee  of  the  national  committee,  was 
an  invaluable  counselor  and  gave  most  efficient  aid.  Mr.  Matthews  was  actively  at  work  from  the  ad  - 
journment  of  the  convention  to  the  closing  of  the  polls.  Mr.  Pattison,  while  not  in  accord  with  some  parts 
of  the  platform  still  supported  the  ticket.  Mr.  Tillman,  who,  while  his  name  was  not  placed  in  nomination, 
received  the  vote  of  his  state  on  the  first  ballot,  delivered  a  large  number  of  speeches  in  support  of  the 
platform  and  ticket.  Vice-President  Stevenson,  who,  though  not  formally  a  candidate,  received  several 
votes  in  the  convention,  promptly  placed  himself  at  the  disposal  of  the  national  committee  and  spoke 
in  several  states.  Mr.  Sibley,  who,  notwithstanding  his  refusal  to  be  a  candidate,  received  a  large  vote 
for  the  vice-presidency,  was  a  zealous  supporter  and  untiring  in  his  efforts  in  behalf  of  the  ticket." 


CHAPTER  XXVII. 

Charles  A.  Dana  on  Bland  as  the  Only  Statesman  in  the  American  Public  Life  of 
the  Last  Quarter  of  the  Century. — Contrast  Between  Eland's  Manners  and  Those 
of  Fashionable  New  York. — He  Visits  New  York  with  Mr.  Bryan  in  1896. — Con 
ditions  Existing  in  New  York  at  That  Time. — Great  Intellectual  and  Defective 
Moral  Force  in  the  New  York  Governing  Class. — Solidarity  of  Wealth  in  1896. — 
Starvation  in  the  Presence  of  Undistributed  Fruit  and  Breadstuffs. — Foreign 
Dictation  in  New  York  Politics. — Will  the  City  be  Forced  to  the  Second  Place? 
— Its  Possibilities  of  Progress. — Its  System  of  Free  Co-Operation  Probably  the 
Best  in  the  World. 


HARLES  A.  DANA  once  said  that  Mr.  Bland  was  the  only 
man  in  the  public  life  of  the  United  States  who  had  reached 
the  level  of  statesmanship  since  the  reconstruction  period.* 
Mr.  Dana  had  done  his  best  to  check  the  "rainbow-chasing 
movement"  in  the  west.  It  was  his  paper  which  gave  it  this  name.  It 
was  he  who,  at  every  step  of  the  contest,  asked :  "What  are  you  going  to 
do  without  New  York?"  It  was  he,  more  than  any  one  else,  who  repre 
sented  the  full  intellectual  force  of  all  that  to  which  Mr.  Bland  was  most 
opposed  and  when  he  saw  the  great  revolution  in  American  politics,  made 
possible  by  Mr.  Eland's  work,  and  effected  in  spite  of  his  own  best  efforts 
to  prevent  it,  he  was  better  qualified  than  almost  any  one  else  to  give  an 
authoritative  judgment.  But  when  Mr.  Bland  visited  New  York  City  in 
August  after  the  convention  of  1896,  no  one  who  lacked  Mr.  Dana's  acute- 
ness  of  intellect  would  have  selected  him  from  among  the  crowds  in  the 
Fifth  Avenue  Hotel  as  the  greatest  American  of  the  last  quarter  of  the 
nineteenth  century.  "Esse  quam  videri"  is  the  motto  on  the  great  seal  of 
North  Carolina,  borrowed  from  what  was  said  of  Metellus  at  a  time  when 
it  was  sai  1  also  that  in  the  politics  of  Rome,  all  things  except  the  honor  of 
Metellus  were  for  sale.  "To  be  rather  than  to  seem"  a  worker  of  great 

*Amos  J.  Cummings,  Mr.  Dana's  confidential  friend,  in  a  signed  article  in  the  Washington  Post  of 
Sunday,  December  12, 1897. 

1 6  241 


242  AN  AMERICAN  COMMONER. 

results — that  had  become  a  second  nature  with  Mr.  Bland.  He  thought 
little  of  himself  or  of  his  personal  appearance.  With  his  badly-fitting 
coat,  and  trousers  which  bagged  at  the  knees,  he  seemed  wholly  discordant 
with  the  civilization  of  the  great  and  splendid  city  where  even  the  cham 
pion  pugilists  wear  irreproachable  silk  hats  and  dine  in  absolutely  faultless 
evening  dress. 

He  had  come  with  Mr.  Bryan's  party  as  the  correspondent  of  a  New 
York  newspaper — sending  it  from  station  to  station  along  the  route,  letters 
or  telegrams  in  support  of  Mr.  Bryan's  candidacy. 

Nothing  could  have  been  more  characteristic  than  his  willingness  to 
render  such  unpretentious  service.  The  Chicago  convention,  as  we  have 
seen,  had  three  times  given  Mr.  Bland  a  majority  of  its  votes  for  president 
with  enough  scattering  votes  held  out  to  prevent  his  nomination.  On  the 
fifth  ballot  his  name  had  been  withdrawn  under  instructions  from  him 
which  had  been  secured  in  advance,  and  that  episode  in  his  career  had 
closed.  It  had  been  nothing  more  than  an  episode.  His  great  work  as  a 
leader  had  been  done  in  forcing  the  conditions  which  made  the  Chicago 
platform  possible  and  when  he  reached  New  York,  it  was  to  witness  at  close 
range  the  intellectual  effects  on  the  powerful  domestic  and  foreign  capital 
istic  interests  of  that  city,  of  the  first  open  and  determined  revolt  against 
their  control  of  the  policies  of  both  parties  and  of  the  government  through 
one  or  the  other  of  the  parties  put  into  power  as  their  agent. 

The  New  York  City  of  1896  was  well  worth  the  careful  and  long- 
continued  study  of  the  patriot  and  statesman.  With  great  possibilities  of 
evil  always  involved  by  the  dictation  of  its  privileged  classes  and  with  the 
always  imminent  menace  to  popular  government  and  to  civilization  itself 
resulting  from  their  habitual  use  of  money  in  controlling  elections,  the  city 
represented  also  what  is  without  doubt  the  most  highly  organized  system 
of  free  industrial  and  commercial  co-operation  in  the  world.  It  had  ac 
cumulated,  in  the  hands  of  a  few  men  of  great  intellect  and  no  visible  lim 
itation  of  morals,  the  vast  wealth  which  resulted  from  a  change  of  economic 


AN  AMERICAN  COMMONER.  24; 

system  made  during  and  immediately  after  the  Civil  war  and  intended  to 
make  the  agricultural  producers  of  the  south  pay  a  continuous  war-indem 
nity,  levied  on  their  products  by  those  highly  scientific  modern  methods, 
which  take  from  a  conquered  people  in  times  of  profound  quiet  more  than 
Roman  conquest  could  take  when  the  gold  and  silver  from  the  public 
treasuries  and  the  altars  of  the  gods  were  carried  with  the  private  treas 
ures  of  the  conquered  to  be  distributed  at  Rome.  This  policy,  operating 
not  only  against  the  south  but  against  the  direct  producer  everywhere, 
had  put  in  the  hands  of  a  few  thousand  men,  most  of  them  well  read  in 
books  and  some  of  them  extraordinarily  subtle  in  intellect,  a  vaster  power 
than  any  Roman  oligarchy  had  ever  exercised.  Some  of  them  had  grown 
haughty  and  in  their  haughtiness  ferocious — ready,  as  one  of  the  higher 
type  of  the  class  said  at  about  the  time  of  Mr.  Eland's  visit,  to  stand  "free 
coinage  cranks,"  or  others  whom  they  disapproved,  against  the  wall  and 
shoot  them.  Their  alliances  with  London  were  close.  Their  sympathies 
were  at  all  times  with  Europe  rather  than  with  America.  Their  inter 
marriages  with  the  English  landholding  nobility,  impoverished  by  western 
agricultural  competition,  made  their  detestation  of  government  by  the 
majority  a  matter  of  class  pride  as  well  as  of  the  timidity  of  capital.  This 
timidity  was  so  great  that  in  every  strike  they  seemed  to  expect  a  civil 
war  and  in  every  street  mob  the  beginning  of  a  new  reign  of  terror  in  which 
the  guillotine  was  to  be  set  up  in  City  Hall  park  and  they  themselves 
decapitated  as  the  first  step  in  the  distribution  of  the  vast  hoards  they  held, 
largely  untaxed  and  untaxable  in  their  safe-deposit  vaults.  Between  such 
men  as  Herr  Most,  who  might  not  object  to  distribution  by  the  guillotine 
and  by  such  extra-judicial  measures  as  that  by  which  the  southern  slaves 
were  liberated — between  unscientific  revolutionists  of  that  type  and  states 
men  like  Mr.  Bland  who  proposed  an  even  more  effective  redistribution 
by  the  slow  and  unavoidable  processes  of  natural  law,  they  made  no  real 
distinction.  The  adoption  of  the  Chicago  platform  threw  them  into  such  a 
blind  rage  as  had  not  been  seen  in  the  politics  of  the  country  since  the 


244  AN  AMERICAN  COMMONER. 

election  of  1860.*  They  attacked,  by  every  means  in  their  power,  any  one 
they  could  reach  who  ventured  to  favor  the  democratic  candidates.  They 
aimed  to  create  and  they  virtually  did  create  a  complete  solidarity  of  the 
banking,  commercial  and  manufacturing  classes  against  the  Chicago  plat 
form.  When  Messrs.  Bryan  and  Bland  reached  the  city,  they  had  al 
ready  so  far  succeeded  that  an  acquaintance  of  Mr.  Bland  who  met  him  in 
the  corridor  of  the  Fifth  Avenue  Hotel  the  day  after  the  great  speech  with 
which  Mr.  Bryan  opened  the  campaign,  suggested  the  absolute  hopeless 
ness  of  accomplishing  anything  in  New  York  except  by  appeal  to  the 
despised  masses  of  the  people. 

At  this  time,  among  these  "masses" — people  representing  the  average 
goodness  and  the  highest  possibilities  of  human  nature — there  was  much 
suffering,  and  as  it  is  a  fact  well  known  to  all  who  profit  by  the  status  quo 
that  revolutions  "come  seldom  except  on  empty  stomachs,"  this  increased 
the  dread  of  the  future  in  a  country  which  manifestly  could  no  longer  be 
controlled  for  "business  stability"  by  buying  a  few  Indiana  counties. 
The  prostration  of  business  incident  to  the  bankers'  panic  and  the  suspen 
sion  of  silver  coinage,  had  filled  the  country  with  unemployed  laborers, 
and  many  of  them  had  collected  in  New  York  City,  where  already  thous 
ands  were  on  the  verge  of  starvation.  When  it  is  remembered  that  at  this 
time,  with  women  dropping  dead  in  the  streets  of  New  York  from  sheer 
starvation,  the  west  and  south  had  a  "surplus"  of  undistributed  food  which 
would  have  been  given  away  if  necessary;  when  it  is  a  fact  that  within  a 
range  of  twenty  miles  of  New  York,  fruit  of  so  good  quality  as  to  be  a 
luxury  to  the  best  fed  in  the  tenement  districts  could  be  seen  rotting 
under  the  trees  in  the  suburbs  of  villages  where  silver  was  "boycotted"  and 
where  trade  was  almost  stopped  by  the  difficulty  small  dealers  had  in 
changing  ten  dollar  national  bank  notes;  when  at  midnight  around  a 
bakery  in  the  lower  part  of  the  city  where  fragments  of  stale  bread  were 
given  away,  a  long  line  of  men  and  women  would  stand  night  after  night 

*Their  action  against  Banker  St.  John  for  entertaining  Mr.  Bryan  is  an  illustration  of  their  temper. 


AN  AMERICAN  COMMONER.  245 

patiently  waiting  for  that  which  kept  together  the  souls  and  bodies  of  their 
children— thinking  of  such  things  as  these,  we  can  the  better  realize  what 
the  benevolence  of  Mr.  Eland's  statesmanship  would  have  meant  for  the 
comfort,  happiness  and  safety  of  New  York  City  at  a  time  when  the  lead 
ing  representative  of  its  "better  element"  was  openly  calling  for  the  fusil 
lade  as  an  economic  argument.* 

It  is  not  possible  here  to  do  more  than  suggest  New  York  conditions. 
The  worst  of  its  dangers  is  foreign  control — the  dictation  of  its  municipal 
policies  and  its  national  attitude  by  non-resident  financiers,  who  have  their 
branch  banks  or  their  financial  agencies  in  the  district  below  Chambers 
street.  If  it  escapes  this  danger;  if  it  refuses  to  be  an  European  and  be 
comes  an  American  city,  its  already  highly  developed  system  of  industrial 
and  commercial  co-operation  will  give  it  the  mastery  of  the  trade  of  the 
world.  But  if  it  refuses ;  if  it  is  to  be  governed  by  the  tyranny  of  the  few 
square  miles  between  Chambers  street  and  the  Battery,  it  will  become  a 
second  class  American  city,  sent  to  the  background  by  forces  which  its 
non-resident  European  magnates  can  no  more  estimate  than  in  August, 
1896,  they  could  have  estimated  the  moral  forces  represented  by  Mr. 
Bland,  as  he  kept  in  the  background  among  the  crowds  of  notables  who 
thronged  the  lobbies  and  halls  of  the  Fifth  Avenue  Hotel. 

Of  the  possibilities  of  New  York  City  for  progress,  there  can  be  no 
doubt.  It  had  in  1896  the  most  effective  organization  of  charitable 
workers  in  the  country,  if  not  in  the  world.  The  work  of  its  religious 
organizations  has  been  crippled,  it  is  true,  by  such  plutocratic  influence  as 


*The  moral  condition  of  the  idle  and  dangerous  classes  of  the  city  at  this  period  was  illustrated  by 
the  notorious  banquet  at  which  an  unfortunate  woman  was  hired  to  dance  unclad  on  the  table  before  the 
guests.  Another  characteristic  incident  was  a  "disrobing  act"  in  one  of  the  theatres— a  scene  in  which  a 
woman,  hired  to  lose  her  miserable  soul  for  that  purpose,  undressed  to  her  last  garment  on  the  stage  be 
fore  the  mayor  of  "Greater  New  York''  and  according  to  a  New  York  newspaper  report,  threw  her  stock 
ings  into  his  lap.  A  similar  exhibition  was  given  in  St.  Louis  in  1898  just  prior  to  the  Springfield  conven 
tion,  and  it  is  something  more  than  a  co-incidence  that  the  direct  beneficiaries  of  its  proceeds  were  po 
litical  experts,  long  accustomed  to  packing  conventions  against  what  Mr.  Bland  represented  in  politics 
and  in  ethics.  The  theatrical  posters  of  New  York  or  St.  Louis  any  day  in  the  season  are  apt  to  illustrate 
the  moral  meaning  of  the  "New  Americanism"  which  is  too  "expansive"  to  be  restrained  by  the  constitu 
tion  or  the  decalogue. 


246  AN  AMERICAN  COMMONER. 

that  which  has  capitalized  one  of  its  great  denominations  on  a  business 
basis  of  real  estate  endowment,  held  permanently  in  mortmain  by  an 
evasion  of  the  spirit  of  the  common  law.  But  in  spite  of  this,  the  city 
shows  a  continually  increasing  number  of  intelligent  people,  willing  to 
do  unpaid  work  for  others  and  capable  of  organizing  with  quickness  and 
precision  to  carry  out,  through  definite  and  business-like  methods,  pur 
poses  which  have  their  origin  in  the  spirit  which  alone  saves  the  world 
from  becoming  an  inferno — the  spirit  of  sympathy  of  each  in  the  depriva 
tions  and  sufferings  of  all  the  rest,  even  of  those  who  suffer  deservedly. 
These,  whether  they  spend  their  lives  among  the  dangerous  classes,  in  the 
palaces  with  which  the  city  is  so  greatly  afflicted,  or  live  in  more  fortunate 
poverty,  sharing  their  little  all  to  relieve  those  who  have  nothing  at  all — 
these  are  the  "better  element"  of  New  York  and  in  1896,  they  had  no 
better  representative  in  the  world  than  the  unostentatious  Missourian  who 
came  among  them  and  went  from  them  almost  unnoticed  and  wholly  mis 
understood. 


CHAPTER  XXVIII. 

Mr.  Eland's  Years  of  Greatest  Achievement. — The  Climax  of  a  Great  Career  Comes 
in  1898.— His  Stand  Against  Imperialism.-  The  Spanish  War  Used  to  Turn  the 
Flank  of  Chicago  Platform  Democracy  so  as  to  Demonetize  Silver. — Issues 
Precipitated  by  the  Teller  Resolution. — Sanford  B.  Dole  as  the  Agent  of  the 
Imperialistic  Movement. — The  Hawaiian  Government  Employs  Sub-Agents  to 
Attack  Mr.  Eland's  Rear. — Hawaii  and  Cuba  Discussed  Before  the  Spanish  War. 
— Far-Reaching  Influence  of  the  Standard  Oil  Company  and  the  "Sugar  Trust." 
— The  Attempt  to  Shape  the  Policies  of  Both  Parties  so  as  to  Prevent  an  Issue 
Against  Imperialism. — Mr.  Bland  Forces  Open  Fighting. 

[E  years  of    greatest  achievement    in  Mr.  Eland's    life  were 
1 877,  when  he  moved  to  suspend  the  rules  and  pass  the  free 
coinage  bill  which  became  the  Bland- Allison  Act;  1893-4, 
when  he  checked  the  federalism  of  the  Cleveland  administra 
tion,  and  1898,  when  he  forced  issues  for  American  constitutional  liberty 
against  the  programme  of  commercial  imperialism,  which  had  been  revived 
from  the  Grant  administration. 

It  happens  to  many  men  who  have  been  active  in  public  life  to  outlive 
their  usefulness.  Mr.  Bland  had  the  great  good  fortune  to  be  able  to  call 
into  play  in  the  last  years  of  his  life  the  full  force  of  his  reserve  powers 
and  thus  to  make  these  closing  years  the  climax  of  his  work.  At  the 
crisis  which  decided  the  future  of  the  country  after  the  Mexican  conquest, 
Webster,  Clay  and  Benton  all  three  exhausted  their  last  remaining  forces 
and  died  in  the  attempt  to  save  the  country  from  retrogression  and 
anarchy.  Again,  after  the  Civil  war,  Sumner,  Greeley  and  Seward  sac 
rificed  power,  popularity  and  the  possibilities  of  long  life  to  prevent  the 
complete  overthrow  of  the  Constitution  by  the  oligarchy  which  controlled 
the  Grant  administration.  When,  after  the  Spanish  war,  the  cause  of 
civilization,  of  progress,  of  constitutional  liberty  once  more  demanded 

such  devotion,  Mr.  Bland  was  ready  to  do  his  best  simply  and  steadfastly 

247 


248  AN  AMERICAN  COMMONER. 

as  he  had  always  done  it.  If  it  happened  to  him,  as  it  had  happened  to 
Benton  before  him,  to  seem  to  stand  alone,  he  had  with  him  still  the 
twentieth  century  majority  for  whom  he  contended,  striving  that  the  pain 
fully  achieved  results  of  the  nineteenth  century  sacrifice  might  not  be  lost 
to  them.  Had  he  died  at  the  close  of  the  campaign  of  1896,  it  might 
have  been  truly  said  of  him  that  no  other  public  man  of  his  generation  had 
done  more  to  break  down  obstruction  and  clear  the  way  for  the  world's 
future.  As  he  died  in  1899,  after  having  made  the  stand  which  will  save 
the  country  from  a  complete  repudiation  of  the  constitutional  principles 
of  1 788,  it  must  be  said  of  him  by  all  who  will  do  him  justice,  that  no 
other  public  man  of  the  last  quarter  of  the  nineteenth  century  had  done  so 
much. 

In  the  campaign  of  1896,  Mr.  Bland  was  re-elected  to  Congress  after 
having  been  elected  and  re-elected  to  every  Congress  since  i872,  except  the 
Fifty-fourth — the  Congress  elected  in  the  "off  year"  of  the  Cleveland 
administration  when  the  democratic  party  as  an  organization  was  prac 
tically  nonexistent.  He  was  urged  to  take  the  governorship  of  Missouri  in 
1896,  but  he  believed  that  his  still  unfinished  work  required  his  presence 
in  the  House  of  Representatives.  He  was  right.  The  conditions  of  1873, 
which  had  called  him  into  public  life,  were  about  to  recur,  forced  by  the 
same  methods,  for  the  same  purposes,  and  developing  finally  in  1900  the 
same  results — the  demonetization  of  silver  and  the  perpetuation  of  a 
corporation  currency. 

The  last  resort  of  plutocracy  struggling  to  prevent  oligarchy  from 
being  supplanted  by  popular  government,  is,  in  every  country,  war — 
foreign  war  if  convenient,  civil  war  if  necessary.  The  unprecedented  vote 
cast  for  the  Chicago  platform  in  1896  showed  conclusively  that  the  people 
were  in  a  position  to  re-assume  control  of  the  government,  unless  some 
thing  decisive  was  done  to  prevent  it,  and  in  January,  1898,  when  the 
combined  bimetallists  of  the  Senate,  by  a  vote  of  47  to  32,  made  a  demon 
stration  in  force  by  passing  the  Teller  resolution  declaring  the  national 


AN  AMERICAN  COMMONER.  249 

debt  payable,  principal  and  interest,  in  silver  at  the  government's  option, 
the  crisis  came.  In  the  House  where  Mr.  Bland  forced  issues  with  them, 
the  republicans  voted  against  the  resolution  by  182  to  50,  but  it  was  clear 
that  at  the  "off  year"  election  the  House,  under  conditions  then  existing, 
was  likely  to  become  two-thirds  democratic. 

It  is  now  evident  that  the  passage  of  the  Teller  resolution  was  a  great 
tactical  mistake.  It  was  in  fact  a  challenge  which  called  the  managers  of 
an  administration  party  of  great  skill  and  ruthless  determination,  repre 
senting  the  greatest  capitalistic  combinations  of  the  world,  to  do  their  ut 
most  against  a  recently  organized  and  at  that  time  not  thoroughly  coherent 
opposition. 

At  the  very  time  this  resolution  passed,  Mr.  Sanford  B.  Dole,  "presi 
dent  of  the  Hawaiian  Republic,"  was  travelling  in  the  United  States, 
and  "the  Hawaiian  government"  was  employing  agents  with  political  in 
fluence,  to  open  in  both  parties  the  work  of  "expansion,"  by  which  the 
imperialism  of  the  Grant  administration  was  to  be  renewed.  Part  of  this 
plan  was  to  get  into  Mr.  Eland's  rear  in  Missouri,  and  if  possible  cut 
him  off  from  his  base.  For  that  purpose,  agents  were  employed  tc 
travel  through  the  southwest  attempting  to  organize  the  imperialistic 
movement  in  Missouri,  Kentucky,  Arkansas,  Illinois  and  Texas — a  solid 
block  of  powerful  states,  the  control  of  which  was  rightly  considered  vital. 
At  this  time  (February,  189?),  the  writer  was  editing  a  paper  in  Missouri 
intended  to  support  Mr.Bland's  policies  and  to  prevent  the  Chicago  platform 
from  being  abandoned.  In  this  paper  of  February  i7,  1898,  the  week  of 
the  blowing  up  of  the  Maine,  appeared  the  following: 

"President  Dole,  of  Hawaii,  is  travelling  in  the  interests  of  the  cap- 
talists  he  represents  in  what  is  more  a  commercial  syndicate  than  a  govern 
ment.  The  best  possible  settlement  of  the  question  he  is  trying  to  force  on 
us,  would  be  to  secure  all  the  port-room  we  need  in  Hawaii  for  naval  sta 
tions  and  then  to  let  the  islands  alone,  leaving  the  Monroe  doctrine  to  take 
care  of  them,  as  it  is  entirely  able  to  do." 

The  connection  of  the  question  of  "liberating  Cuba"  with  Mr.  Dole's 


250  AN  AMERICAN  COMMONER. 

mission  in  the  interest  of  the  sugar  syndicate  was  recognized  in  the  para 
graph  following  this  in  the  same  issue : 

"The  question  of  the  fate  of  Cuba  is  one  of  the  deepest  interest  to 

every  American It  is  pitiful  to  see  these  poor  people  suffering  as  they 

do  under  Spanish  rule,  and  yet  there  could  hardly  be  a  greater  misfortune 

for  the  country  than  the  annexation  of  the  island If  we  annex  them 

or  if  we  annex  Hawaii,  we  will  get  servants,  not  citizens,  and  we  will  have 

to  increase  our  already  burdensome  navy  to  a  permanent  war  basis 

The  annexation  of  Cuba  would  be  the  final  decisive  step  away  from  the 
old  republic  of  free  and  equal  states  into  an  imperialism  in  which  a  league 
of  the  more  powerful  communities  would  dominate  the  weaker  and 
hold  them  as  subject  provinces." 

As  this  was  written  in  February,  1898,  before  the  Spanish  war  and  be 
fore  the  blowing  up  of  the  Maine  it  will  be  accepted,  no  doubt,  as  better 
evidence  than  anything  which  could  be  written  now  of  what  was  then 
suggested  to  Mr.  Eland's  supporters  by  the  work  of  Mr.  Dole  and  the 
Hawaiian  sugar  syndicate  in  the  interest  of  what  is  now  demonstrated  as 
a  conspiracy  to  turn  the  flank  of  the  democratic  party,  to  defeat  bimetallism, 
to  refund  the  national  debt  on  a  gold  basis,  to  give  the  control  of  the  cur 
rency  permanently  to  the  national  banks  and  at  the  same  time  to  annex 
Hawaii,  Cuba,  Puerto  Rico  and  the  Philippines,  as  the  base  of  production 
for  the  bulk  of  the  cane  sugar  output  of  the  world. 

The  New  York  sugar  syndicate  in  league  with  that  of  the  Pacific  coast 
had  a  direct  interest  in  this,  warranting  heavy  expenditures  in  contribu 
tions  to  campaign  funds  and  "attorneys'  fees"*  to  realize  it.  In  189?,  it  had 
been  announced  in  the  New  York  papers  that  the  leading  stockholders  of 
the  Standard  Oil  Company  had  invested  so  heavily  in  sugar  securities  that 
both  these  great  monopolies  were  virtually  under  one  political  manage 
ment.  In  the  same  newspaper  from  which  the  foregoing  extracts  were 

*It  is  said  on  authority  which  entitles  it  to  full  consideration,  that  checks  were  cashed  in  St.  Louis  for 
services  rendered  in  this  connection  to  "the  Hawaiian  government."  The  interest  of  the  "Hawaiian 
government"  in  employing  "attorneys"  at  large  expense  to  break  down  the  authority  of  Mr.  Bland  and 
of  the  democratic  House  caucus  against  Hawaiian  annexation,  appeared  shortly  after  the  joint  resolu 
tion  seizing  the  islands  on  the  ground  of  "military  necessity"  when  it  was  announced  that  the  sugar 
trust  had  assumed  control  of  their  sugar  output.  W.  V.  B. 


AN  AMERICAN  COMMONER.  251 

made,  and  at  the  same  page  of  the  same  issue  (February  i7,  1898),  ap 
peared  an  editorial  which  is  reproduced  here  in  explanation  of  the  forces 
then  organizing  attacks  upon  Mr.  Bland,  both  at  Washington  and  in  the 
west.  The  editorial  in  question  was  as  follows: 

The  committee  of  the  Ohio  legislature  investigating  the  Standard 
Oil  Company,  learns  that  it  controls  eighty-five  per  cent  of  the  oil  produc 
tion  of  the  country.  It  is  now  reorganizing  its  system  so  as  to  evade  the 
anti-trust  law  more  effectively.  At  the  same  time,  it  has  done  what  was 
a  mere  child's  play  for  the  men  in  it — taken  control  of  the  New  York  mar 
ket  and  forced  up  the  price  of  its  stock  $25,000,000  or  from  $420  to  $440 
a  share. 

The  trust  is  without  doubt  the  most  dangerous  and  most  powerful 
monopoly  in  the  world.  It  illustrates  the  "communism  of  capital"  as  noth 
ing  else  could.  Its  stockholders  have  grown  enormously  rich  as  a  result 
of  violating  the  laws,  bribing  legislatures  and  corrupting  courts.  Of 
course  they  do  not  allow  the  money  they  draw  from  the  public  as  plunder — 
they  call  it  dividends — to  lie  idle.  They  reinvest  it  at  once. 

United  States  bonds  are  a  favorite  investment  with  them.  In  the 
first  place  they  can  deposit  them  in  the  treasury  at  Washington  instead  of 
paying  rent  to  a  safe-deposit  company  to  take  care  of  them.  In  the 
treasury  vaults,  the  government  itself  takes  care  of  them,  and  is  ready  to 
use  the  entire  United  States  army  for  that  purpose,  if  necessary. 

It  not  only  guards  them  without  expense  to  the  trust,  but  pays  interest 
on  them.  And  what  is  most  remarkable  of  all,  it  gives  the  Standard  Oil 
stockholder  who  deposits  a  thousand  dollar  bond,  $900  in  crisp,  new,  silk 
paper  money  indorsed  by  the  government  and  intended  to  circulate  on  the 
public  credit. 

He  gets  these  900  new  silk  paper  dollars  for  nothing.  They  are  a 
present  to  him  because  he  is  a  financier  who  knows  more  about  money 
than  other  people,  and  is  entitled  to  call  other  people  repudiators  and 
scoundrels  if  they  object.  It  is  true,  he  is  required  to  organize  several  of 
his  employes  into  a  "bank"  and  to  sign  this  elegant  new  silk  paper  money 
with  his  own  name  as  president,  before  he  lends  it  to  western  borrowers  at 
rates  which  run  as  high  as  sixteen  per  cent,  or  to  hard-pressed  New  York 
speculators  at  rates  as  high  as  sixty,  but  he  does  this  cheerfully.  Ink  is 
cheap  and  when  the  stroke  of  a  pen  is  all  that  is  required  to  put  into  circu 
lation  (where  it  will  stay  until  it  wears  out)  a  hundred  silk  dollars  indorsed 
by  the  greatest  nation  of  the  most  outrageously  fooled  people  on  earth,  he 
would  be  indeed  an  economical  Standard  Oil  magnate  who  would  grudge 


252  AN  AMERICAN  COMMONER. 

the  cost.  There  are  no  such.  They  are  all  far-sighted  men  who  never 
step  over  a  pound  to  save  a  penny,  and  there  is  not  one  of  them  but  is  ready 
to  give  by  the  hundred  thousand  these  silk  paper  dollars  presented  to  him 
by  the  government,  whenever  they  are  needed,  to  campaign  funds  to  uphold 
the  cause  of  "honest  money." 

But  national  banks  are  only  one  of  a  hundred  different  semi-political 
money  manufacturing  enterprises  in  which  the  Standard  Oil  magnates 
are  either  controlling  or  influential  partners.  They  have  bought  into  the 
sugar  trust.  They  are  heavily  interested  in  the  steel  trust.  They  control 
the  syndicate  iron  fields  of  the  northwest.  They  are  deep  into  steamship 
companies  which  (largely  through  their  influence)  have  been  subsidized 
from  the  federal  treasury  on  the  pretext  that  they  can  not  carry  the  mail 
at  ordinary  rates.  They  are  partners  in  the  iniquity  of  the  anthracite  coal 
pool  which  keeps  the  coal  supply  of  New  York  City  entirely  cornered,  and 
forces  up  the  price  against  thousands,  of  poor  families  who  shiver  and 
freeze  through  the  winter  because  of  it.  They  have  obtained  by  corruption 
the  most  valuable  public  franchises  of  New  York  City.  They  are  back  of  its 
gas  monopoly.  They  own  the  enormously  valuable  Broadway  surface  road 
franchise,  and  wherever  else  through  the  greater  city,  a  franchise  was  to  be 
grabbed  they  have  grabbed  it,  until  now  the  streets  are  more  completely  un 
der  their  control  and  the  control  of  their  political  agents,  than  they  are  of 
the  people.  They  have  begun  to  use  the  surplus  from  other  monopolies  to 
control  the  trolley  road  franchises  on  the  most  frequented  routes  in  the 
neighborhood  of  eastern  cities.  They  are  going  into  electric  lighting  com 
panies,  into  manufacturing,  into  banking,  into  every  enterprise  for  which 
monopoly  can  be  obtained,  or  subsidy  wrung  from  the  people. 

The  income  for  a  single  day  of  such  men  as  the  Rockefellers,  the 
Flaglers  and  the  Whitneys  is  more  than  a  king's  ransom.  They  have  more 
money  than  they  can  spend,  though  they  build  palaces  in  town  and  country, 
buy  yachts  and  racing  stables,  travel  from  continent  to  continent  and  revel 
in  every  luxury  that  the  servitude  of  mankind  throughout  the  globe  can 
offer  to  minister  to  their  pride  or  to  pamper  them  in  the  indulgence  of  the 
luxurious  tastes  which  their  immense  wealth  creates. 

If  any  American  dare  oppose  them  in  their  determination  to  make 
the  government  of  this  country — which  God  designed  to  be,  and  which  will 
be  the  greatest  and  freest  on  earth — a  mere  annex  of  their  plutocratic 
commune,  then  he  is  a  "fool,  a  crank,  a  lunatic,  an  anarchist."  They  pro 
ceed  to  smirch  his  character,  to  blast  his  business,  to  deprive  him  of  his  em 
ployment,  to  bring  him  to  want  and  his  children  to  hunger.  In  their 
politics  they  show  no  mercy  to  anyone  who  opposes  them.  They  buy 


AN  AMERICAN  COMMONER.  253 

or  intimidate  newspapers,  driving  out  from  them  every  man  who  dares 
have  a  mind  or  a  conscience  of  his  own.  They  send  their  money  into 
congressional  and  judicial  districts  to  force  out  of  public  life  the  congress 
man  who  has  been  brave  enough  to  voice  the  will  of  the  people  against 
them,  the  judge  who  has  been  just  enough  to  resist  the  infamous  demand 
for  the  prostitution  of  the  bench.  They  invested  money  not  by  the  thous 
and,  but  by  the  million,  to  buy  the  presidency,  and  they  believe  that  they 
succeeded.  They  believe  that  they  can  succeed  again,  over  and  over,  as 
often  as  they  please. 

As  an  explanation  of  the  polemical  tone — too  warm  to  produce  the 
impression  of  deliberative  impartiality — in  which  this  is  written,  it  should 
be  remembered  that  it  appeared  as  a  newspaper  editorial  at  what  was  mani 
festly  a  crisis.  There  was  no  intention  then  nor  is  there  now,  of  aspersing 
the  private  character  of  Mr.  Whitney,  Mr.  Rockefeller,  Mr.  Flagler  or  any 
other  great  "Captain  of  Industry."  As  a  rule,  they  are,  in  their  private 
lives,  amiable  men.  But  when  all  their  private  amiability  is  admitted  it 
remains  true  that  no  warmth  of  tone  could  do  justice  to  the  demoralizing 
and  corrupting  influences  of  the  corporate  combinations  from  which  they 
draw  dividends. 

At  this  time  (1898),  Mr.  Richard  Croker,  the  leading  political  expert 
of  Greater  New  York,  had  been  brought  home  from  Europe  and  restored 
to  power  that  "a  trade"  might  be  made  to  better  advantage  with  political 
experts  in  the  south  and  west — more  especially  in  Missouri,  which  Mr. 
Eland's  work  had  made  a  "keystone  state."  Mr.  Bland  was  to  be  sent 
to  the  rear  if  possible — it  did  not  appear  how  at  the  time.  But  it  did  ap 
pear  later  when  the  money  of  the  Hawaiian  sugar  syndicate  was  used 
against  him  to  promote  not  only  the  annexation  of  Hawaii  but  of  Cuba 
and  Puerto  Rico  as  well.  It  was  evident  that  for  the  time  being  Mr.  Bland 
would  be  forced  back  by  the  unlimited  power  of  this  great  combination 
of  corporations.  All  he  could  do  for  the  time  being  was  to  make  the  stand 
which  would  force  an  open  contest,  on  the  merits  of  which  the  people  might 
have  opportunity  to  pass.  This  he  did  with  decisive  success. 

As  the  plan  of  the  combination  against  him  developed  with  the  develop- 


254  AN  AMERICAN  COMMONER. 

ment  of  the  Spanish  war  excitement,  its  purpose  became  clear.  It  was  to 
shape  the  policies  of  both  parties  so  as  to  prevent  a  decisive  issue  on  the 
part  of  the  democrats  against  what  was  to  be  done  through  the  republicans 
in  administration.  Hawaii,  Cuba,  Puerto  Rico,  and,  if  possible,  the 
Philippines  were  to  be  annexed.  But  democratic  opposition  to  imperial 
ism  was  to  be  directed,  if  possible,  only  against  the  annexation  of  the 
Philippines  so  that  in  spite  of  the  pledged  faith  of  the  government,  the 
Cuban  republic  could  be  suppressed  by  garrison  control  and  a  "carpet-bag" 
government,  set  up  to  seize  and  hold  the  island  while  professing  to  repre 
sent  the  Cuban  people.  It  was  in  such  a  conspiracy  as  this  that  Mr. 
Eland's  supporters  were  asked  to  join.  It  was  against  this  that  they  stood 
with  him  when  he  made  his  last  great  contest  in  the  summer  and  autumn 
of  1898.  He  died  before  the  passage  of  the  demonetization  act  of  1900 
which  resulted  from  the  loss  of  the  House  and  Senate  in  1898.  Had  he 
been  more  strongly  supported  this  might  have  been  prevented.  But  he  had 
not  lost  for  he  had  checked  imperialism  in  Missouri  and  the  west  and  had 
once  more  saved  the  life  of  the  democratic  party. 


CHAPTER  XXIX. 

The  Spanish  War  as  a  War  for  the  Suppression  of  the  Cuban  Republic. — Mr.  Bland 
Forces  Issues  With  President  McKinley  and  Compels  Him  to  go  on  Record. — 
Recognition  of  the  Cuban  Republic  Openly  Opposed  by  the  Administration. — 
Its  Anxiety  to  Begin  War  Leads  it  to  Fire  on  Merchant  Vessels  Before  War  is 
Declared. — ' 'A  War  for  Humanity"  Converted  into  a  Movement  for  Imperial 
ism. — Failure  of  an  Attempt  to  Turn  Missouri  Democrats  Against  Mr.  Bland. — 
The  Flag  of  the  Cuban  Republic  Torn  Down  at  San  Luis. — Open  Declaration  of 
the  Plan  to  Suppress  the  Cuban  Republic  by  Garrison  Government. — Benevolent 
Assimilation  in  the  Philippines. — What  the  Flag  Meant  for  Mr.  Bland. — His 
Work  for  Higher  Civilization  Finished. 


OSTILITIES  against  Spain  were  begun  prior  to  a  formal 
declaration  of  war  by  the  action  of  the  administration  in 
firing  on  and  seizing  the  Buena  Ventura,  the  Pedro,  the 
Mathilde,the  Miguel  Joves,  the  Catalina,  the  Sophia,  the  Can 
dida,  the  Saturnina  and  the  Antonio — nine  "tramp  steamers"  then  trading 
with  our  ports  or  those  of  Cuba  under  the  Spanish  flag.  Between  April 
20,  when  Secretary  Sherman  telegraphed  the  ultimatum  of  the  United 
States  to  Madrid  and  Monday,  April  25,  when  war  was  formally  declared, 
this  action  had  been  taken  in  order  to  make  recession  impossible  and  to 
prevent  any  change  of  the  lines  on  which  "intervention"  had  been  author 
ized.  In  the  declaration,  the  war  was  "dated  back"  to  legalize  the  seizure 
of  these  vessels,  the  clause  adopted  for  that  purpose  being  as  follows : 

"Be  it  enacted,  first,  that  war  be  and  the  same  is  hereby  declared  to 
exist,  and  that  war  has  existed  since  the  2ist  day  of  April,  1898,  including 
said  day,  between  the  United  States  of  America  and  the  Kingdom  of 
Spain." 

In  the  face  of  the  fact  that  these  harmless  tramp  steamers  loaded  with 
fruit,  lumber  and  the  like,  and  trading  back  and  forth  along  our  coast  line 
in  the  perfect  security  of  the  good  faith  of  our  government  were  thus  fired 
on  at  once  as  soon  as  Congress  had  been  brought  to  the  views  of  the 

255 


256  AN  AMERICAN  COMMONER. 

administration — and  in  presence  of  the  official  concession  here  made  that 
the  seizures  were  prior  to  the  declaration  of  war,  the  assertion  that  the 
president  was  greatly  unwilling  to  engage  in  war  is  obviously  unhistorical. 

The  "unwillingness"  he  showed  consisted  of  unwillingness  to  proceed 
for  the  establishment  of  a  free  and  independent  republic  in  Cuba.  This 
was  the  issue  which  Mr.  Bland,  with  quiet  and  skillful  statesmanship, 
forced  upon  him. 

What  is  here  said  of  Mr.  McKinley  is  in  no  sense  personal.  He  is 
spoken  of  only  as  the  representative  of  forces  it  was  beyond  his  power  :o 
control  or  greatly  to  modify — although  it  must  be  added  that  being  a  free 
agent,  he  need  not  have  represented  them. 

The  theory  on  which  Mr.  Bland  proceeded  was  based  on  close  study 
of  conditions  in  New  York  Gity  since  the  beginning  of  the  Cuban  insur 
rection.  It  was  simply  this — that  while  the  Cuban  patriots  had  been 
encouraged  to  fight  desperately  for  their  independence,  to  sacrifice  their 
lives,  to  lay  waste  the  island  and  to  reject  all  offers  of  conciliation  from 
Spain,  no  matter  how  liberal — that  while  money  had  been  supplied  them 
by  New  York  capitalists  for  this  purpose,  it  was  never  a  part  of  the  inten 
tion  of  the  New  York  combination,  which  planned  the  new  imperialistic 
movement,  to  allow  the  island  to  achieve  its  independence,  but  rather  to 
seize  it,  control  its  street  railroad  and  other  franchises,  and  exploit  its  sugar 
production  in  connection  wth  the  control  of  the  sugar  supply  of  Puerto 
Rico,  Hawaii  and  the  Philippines. 

Mr.  Bland  recognized  that  unless  the  necessity  for  domestic  reforms 
were  kept  strongly  before  the  people  and  that  if  their  attention  were 
distracted  even  temporarily  by  this  "expansion"  movement,  the  reforma 
tion  of  the  currency,  the  relief  of  trade  from  its  tariff  restrictions  and  the 
enfranchisement  of  the  people  from  the  worst  evils  of  plutocratic  oligarchy 
would  be  postponed  probably  beyond  his  lifetime.  He  had  every  motive  a 
man  of  high  purposes  can  have  to  inspire  him  to  achievement  and  he  did 
his  work  well. 


Amanda  Black  Goody- 
/  koontz,  Mr.  Eland's 

half  sister. 


HIS  FAVORITE  CHAIR. 


Mrs.  Elizabeth  Bland  Tetley, 
Mr.  Eland's  sister. 


Mrs.  Mary  Steinmetz,  Mr.  Eland's 
Niece  and  adopted  daughter. 


LIVING  MEMBERS 

OF  THE 
BLAND  FAMILY. 


JUDGE  C.  C.  BLAND. 


AN  AMERICAN  COMMONER.  257 

It  was  believed  that  if  the  recognition  of  the  Cuban  republic  could  be 
forced  on  the  administration  as  an  issue  connected  indissolubly  with  the 
declaration  of  war  against  Spain,  the  sugar  interests  in  New  York  and  their 
allied  corporations  would  not  allow  war  to  be  declared.  This  belief  justi 
fied  itself  in  results,  for,  when  the  issue  was  thus  forced  on  the  administra 
tion,  President  McKinley  sent  in  his  message  of  April  n,  declaring  that 
"it  would  not  be  wise  or  prudent  for  this  government  to  recognize  at  this 
time  the  so-called  Cuban  republic,"  and  that  such  recognition  would  com 
pel  the  United  States  to  assume  towards  the  Cuban  republic  "the  mere  re 
lation  of  a  friendly  ally." 

While  this  completely  justified  the  theory  on  which  Mr.  Bland  acted 
in  organizing  the  forces  of  opposition  to  imperialism,  the  working  plan 
which  this  theory  inspired  failed  at  the  crisis,  not  because  it  had  not  been 
justified,  but  because  the  democratic  organization  at  the  time  was  not. 
sufficiently  coherent  to  be  capable  of  holding  the  high  level  of  Mr.  Bland's 
statesmanship.  Instead  of  forcing  the  recognition  of  the  Cuban  republic 
which  there  was  every  reason  to  believe  would  compel  President  McKin- 
ley's  supporters  to  fully  reveal  their  plans,  a  resolution  was  adopted  declar 
ing  merely  that  the  "people  of  Cuba  are  and  of  right  ought  to  be  free  and 
independent."  This  was  substituted  for  a  resolution  that  "the  United 
States  government  hereby  recognizes  the  independence  of  the  Republic  of 
Cuba,"  which  had  been  supported  by  Messrs.  Clark  of  Missouri,  Williams, 
Dinsmore,  Berry  and  Howard,  the  democratic  members  of  the  House 
committee  on  foreign  relations  in  a  report  in  which  they  declared  that  "we 
have  no  doubt  our  simple  recognition  of  the  Republic  of  Cuba  will  enable 
the  Cubans  themselves  ultimately  to  expel  the  Spaniards  from  every  por 
tion  of  that  island." 

Instead  of  intervention  on  this  basis — which  it  was  said  openly  at  the 
time  the  president  would  veto,  the  resolutions  adopted  were  "that  the  peo 
ple  of  the  island  of  Cuba  are  and  of  right  ought  to  be  free  and  independ 
ent,"  and  that  the  United  States  disclaim  any  intention  of  annexing  the 


258  AN  AMERICAN  COMMONER. 

island.  On  Monday,  April  18,  when  the  House  considered  the  Senate  reso 
lution  containing  the  clause :  "Resolved  that  the  people  of  Cuba  are  and  of 
right  ought  to  be  free  and  independent  and  that  the  government  of  the 
United  States  hereby  recognizes  the  Republic  of  Cuba  as  the  true  and 
lawful  government  of  that  island,"  Mr.  Dingley,  as  the  representative  of 
the  administration,  moved  to  strike  out  all  recognition  of  the  Cuban  repub 
lic.  The  motion  carried  by  i78  to  156  and  finally  on  conference  between 
the  House  and  Senate,  the  resolution  was  so  amended  as  to  impose  on  the 
administration  only  the  opportunity  to  violate  its  obligation  to  enforce  the 
rights  of  the  Cuban  people  to  sovereignty.  This  resolution  did  not  declare 
war,  but  it  called  upon  Spain  to  withdraw  from  Cuba  and  authorized  the  ad 
ministration  to  intervene  to  secure  withdrawal.  The  method  of  "interven 
tion"  adopted  was  immediate  attack  on  Spanish  merchant  vessels  before  the 
declaration  of  war.  At  ten  minutes  after  one  o'clock  on  the  morning  of 
April  19,  the  conferees  of  the  House  and  Senate  had  conceded  the  ad 
ministration's  point  against  recognizing  the  Cuban  republic,  and  between 
April  20  and  April  25,  in  advance  of  the  declaration  of  war,  the  mer 
chant  steamers  mentioned  above  had  been  seized  as  a  means  of  making  all 
further  negotiations  impossible. 

The  connection  of  this  movement  with  that  for  the  annexation  of 
Hawaii  appeared  at  once.  Mr.  Bland,  supported  by  the  democrats  of 
the  House  almost  without  exception,  had  made  the  first  stand  against  the 
imperialistic  conspiracy  by  resisting  the  annexation  of  Hawaii  on  the  de 
mand  of  the  sugar  syndicate  government  which  had  no  other  title  than 
that  of  open  and  flagrant  usurpation.  He  was  secretly  attacked  inside 
democratic  lines  on  this,  but  a  majority  of  the  House  democrats  supported 
him  by  caucus  vote  and,  in  spite  of  the  great  power  of  the  combination 
against  him,  it  controlled  only  one  democrat  vote  from  Missouri.  As 
soon  as  the  agents  of  this  combination  saw  that  Mr.  Bland  had  not  suc 
ceeded  in  forcing  the  recognition  of  the  Cuban  republic,  they  began  active 
work  for  the  annexation  of  the  island  "by  consent"  and  for  the  seizure 


AN  AMERICAN  COMMONER.  259 

of  Puerto  Rico  and  its  control  by  "possession  of  arms."  It  was  rightly 
reasoned,  that  if  this  declaration  could  be  established  as  democratic  against 
Mr.  Eland's  position,  the  issue  in  favor  of  self-government  and  against 
garrison  government  could  not  be  squared  in  Cuba,  Hawaii,  or  the  Philip 
pines.  There  is  no  doubt  that  this  plan  in  its  general  details  was  orig 
inated  or  vised  by  the  great  international  financial  combination  of  London 
and  New  York  which  was  seeking  to  establish  our  national  debt  as  a 
permanency  on  a  gold  basis,  and  there  is  no  room  to  question  the  skill 
shown  in  its  conception  and  execution.* 

Mr.  Bland  met  it  openly  and  with  far-seeing  statesmanship.  He  so 
forced  issues  that  the  republicans  representing  the  administration  were 
compelled  to  vote  down  the  measure  authorizing  the  coinage  of  the  silver 
seigniorage  for  war  purposes,  to  vote  down  taxes  on  the  great  corporations 
which  had  forced  the  war,  and  to  take  their  position  openly  in  favor  of  an 
obviously  unnecessary  bond  issue,  supplemented  by  stamp  taxes  on 
business. 

When  this  policy  was  reinforced  by  the  immediate  vote  of  all  appro 
priations  asked  from  the  democrats  of  the  House  and  Senate  for  war  pur 
poses,  it  was  obviously  too  strong  to  be  resisted  and  the  same  influences 
which  controlled  the  administration  set  out  to  force  recession  from  it.  The 
result  of  this  was  what  was  called  "pairing  with  the  administration  on  the 
issues  of  the  war/'  advocated  as  a  policy  by  those  who  had  already  begun 
their  opposition  to  Mr.  Bland  in  the  case  of  Hawaii.  They  favored  the 
seizure  of  Cuba,  Puerto  Rico  and  Hawaii,  the  construction  of  the  Nica 
ragua  canal  in  connection  with  fresh  bond  issues  and  appropriations  for 
an  imperial  navy — including  the  subsidized  auxiliary  cruisers  of  the  com 
bination  which  had  inaugurated  the  "expansion"  movement.  This  attempt 
to  set  Mr.  Bland  aside  was  joined  by  the  same  men  who  had  joined  Mr. 
Cleveland  in  the  attempt  to  control  Missouri  in  favor  of  monometallism 
in  1893.  They  had  no  influence  whatever  with  Mr.  Eland's  constituents. 

*See  Act  of  1900,  demonetizing  silver  and  refunding  the  debt  on  a  gold  basis. 


260  AN  AMERICAN  COMMONER. 

He  was  renominated  for  Congress  in  1898  and  re-elected  on  a  platform 
adopted  by  the  democrats  of  his  district,  strongly  supporting  him  in  the 
stand  he  had  taken  against  the  policy  of  fraud  and  force  the  plutocratic 
oligarchy  was  attempting  to  inaugurate  under  cover  of  what  had  been  de 
clared  "a  war  of  humanity,"  to  liberate  the  people  of  Cuba. 

His  position  on  the  issues  of  the  war  was  defined  in  a  speech  deliv 
ered  at  Springfield,  Mo.,  August  u,  1898,  in  opening  a  convention  held 
there  for  the  purpose  of  nominating  candidates  for  state  offices. 

"We  do  not  intend  to-day  nor  in  the  future,"  he  said,  "to  lose  sight 
of  the  great  issues  laid  down  in  the  Chicago  platform  because  they  must 
be  paramount  as  democratic  issues  until  they  are  settled.  We  propose 
to  make  this  battle  in  the  coming  campaign  along  thesd  lines.  We  do  not 
propose  that  plutocratic  designs  in  this  country,  shall,  for  a  moment  disturb 
the  minds  of  the  people,  so  as  to  distract  and  confuse  in  the  coming  cam 
paign,  this  great  issue. 

"To  give  liberty,  freedom  and  prosperity  to  the  American  people  is 
our  first  duty. 

"Unhappily,  as  it  would  seem,  though  I  hope  it  may  be  otherwise,  we 
were  drawn  into  war,  a  war  that  will  cost  us  some  three  hundred  millions 
of  dollars  (if  I  remember  correctly,)  with  two  hundred  millions  of  bonds 
issued,  two  hundred  millions  more  authorized  to  be  issued  and  a  taxing 
system  that  puts  the  burden  upon  the  people  and  refuses  to  put  it  upon  the 
wealth  of  the  country.  We  insisted  that  in  providing  for  this  war  an 
income  tax  should  be  placed  on  wealth  as  well  as  internal  revenue  taxes 
on  business.  That  was  rejected.  And  why?  Why,  my  friends,  the  sec 
retary  of  the  treasury  had  said  before  the  war  was  supposed  to  be  imminent, 
that  he  wanted  an  issue  of  bonds.  War  or  no  war,  they  intended  to  have 
the  bonds. 

"My  friends,  war  was  declared  and  declared  in  resolutions  by  Congress 
that  placed  this  nation  far  beyond  the  nations  of  the  world  and  the  nations 
of  modern  history  in  its  high  elevation  of  purpose  and  humane  and  demo 
cratic  designs We  declared  that  the  war  was  not  prosecuted  for  the  pur 
pose  of  selfish  aggrandizement,  but  in  the  interest  of  humanity.  I  say 
such  a  spectacle  as  that,  such  devotion  to  humanity  and  freedom  in  declara 
tion  of  war  is  unparalleled  in  the  history  of  the  world.  I  know  the  grave 
questions  that  are  before  this  convention  and  our  country  in  regard  to  this 
matter.  We  may  differ  upon  them  as  democrats  and  republicans,  but  I 
say  to  you,  in  my  opinion,  the  democratic  party  can  do  only  one  thing  and 


AN  AMERICAN  CpMMONER.  261 

that  is  to  follow  the  principles  of  our  fathers,  the  Monroe  doctrine,  the 
teachings  of  Washington  and  Jefferson."* 

On  August  12,  1898,  the  preliminary  peace  protocol,  which  put  an 
end  to  the  war  with  Spain,  was  signed  at  Washington,  and  in  September 
following,  the  administration  tore  down  the  flag  of  the  Cuban  republic  at 
San  Luis,  using  a  detachment  of  soldiers  for  that  purpose.  At  about  the 
same  time,  the  Cuban  patriot  troops,  who  had  fought  with  ours  to  capture 
Santiago,  were  excluded  from  the  city  and  everywhere  throughout  the 
island  the  republic  was  suppressed  by  garrison  control.  What  this  meant — 
how  force  was  eked  with  "diplomacy"  in  carrying  out  the  plan  of  control- 
ing  the  island  against  its  people,  was  admitted  in  a  candid  article  published 
on  the  editorial  page  of  the  St.  Louis  Globe-Democrat  (Rep.),  of  March 
27,  1900,  from  its  Havana  correspondent,  J.  D.  Whelpley. 

"The  appointment  of  Quintin  Bandera  to  an  office  in  this  island  is  a 
good  illustration  of  the  real  political  conditions  which  exist  on  this  island," 

wrote  the  Globe-Democrat  correspondent "Bandera  is  the  most 

virulent  type  of  the  unscrupulous,  anti-American-Cuban  politician.  Others 
are  not  so  dangerous,  but  are,  perhaps,  more  influential  with  a  better  class 
of  people.  Gen.  Gomez,  the  military  hero  of  the  war,  is  resting  quietly 
at  home,  though  he,  too,  in  a  more  intelligent  way,  is  in  favor  of  American 
withdrawal.  Since  the  Americans  came  to  Cuba  Gen.  Gomez  has  received 
from  the  public  funds  on  one  pretext  or  another  $i7,ooo  in  cash.  A 
temporary  quiet  is  profitable  to  him  under  these  circumstances  even  as  it  is 
to  the  others.  Gens.  Rabi,  Lara,  Pedro  and  young  Garcia,  all  these,  and 
many  others  have  taken  offices  at  good  salaries  and  expenses.  Giving  din 
ners  to  their  friends  and  living  luxuriously  on  their  official  incomes  is  about 
the  extent  of  their  acknowledgment  of  the  fact  that  they  are  in  the  public 
pay.  In  short,  the  men  dangerous  to  the  peace  of  the  island  and  the  success 
of  the  American  administration  have  been  bribed  at  heavy  cost  to  behave 
themselves. 

No  one  can  suppose  for  a  moment  that  these  men  can  change  their 
opinions,  their  character,  or  lose  their  ambitions  when  they  accept  the  mil 
itary  governor's  shilling.  Far  from  it ;  it  whets  their  desire  for  unrestricted 


*The  platform  of  this  convention  was  not  reported  finally  until  the  convention  was  about  to  adjourn 
and  in  the  confusion  an  incoherent  section  declaring  ''possession  of  arms"  a  title  to  territory  was  not 
eliminated  as  it  should  have  been.  The  democrats  of  Missouri,  however,  were  correctly  represented  by 
Mr.  Bland. 


262  AN  AMERICAN  COMMONER. 

power.  It  increases  their  own  estimate  of  their  importance.  It  suggests 
possibilities  and  gives  them  position  and  means  to  work  out  their  schemes. 
As  a  temporary  policy,  it  is  a  success.  There  will  be  no  serious  trouble 
in  Cuba  for  some  time.  Any  talk  of  an  immediate  general  insurrection 
is  sensational.  Cuba  will  not  force  herself  to  the  front  with  the  people  of 
the  United  States  in  time  to  enter  as  a  leading  issue  into  the  campaign  of 
1900.  It  is  a  latent  issue,  however,  and  one  which  in  time  will  overshadow 
in  insistency  and  importance  many  others  which  are  now  absorbing  the 
attention  of  the  American  people. 

For  a  time  the  people  of  Cuba  will  be  opposed  to  the  annexation  of  the 
island  to  the  United  States,  or,  in  fact,  anything  less  than  complete  inde 
pendence.  The  American  occupation  has  not  made  itself  particularly  pop 
ular.  The  full  flush  of  the  possibilities  of  home  rule  are  upon  the  people. 
This  feeling  is  ingeniously  fostered  and  encouraged  by  those  who  expect  to 
profit  thereby.  The  Spaniards,  the  owners  of  property  among  the  Cubans, 
and  the  great  mass  of  the  people  who  are  neither  politicians,  warriors  nor 
adventurers,  desire  a  reign  of  peace.  They  fear  the  possible  recurrence  of 
a  time  of  war,  and  they  remember  the  evils  of  the  Spanish  system,  but  they 
also  recognize  the  military  and  restraining  character  of  the  American  occu 
pation  and  realize  that  these  Americans  are  aliens  in  blood  and  mind.  The 
Spaniards  generally  favor  an  American  control  indefinitely  continued,  but 
their  favor  is  not  because  of  political  or  social  affiliation,  but  is  purely  selfish 
and  commercial.  The  solid  class  of  the  natives  hope  for  a  Cuban  republic, 
and  at  present  they  favor  trying  it.  Knowing  their  own  people  as  they 
do,  however,  they  fear  for  its  possibilities.  As  they  say,  'In  my  heart  I 
want  to  see  Cuba  free.  In  my  head  I  fear  this  can  never  be  so.' 

These  patriotic  men  are  right.  Cuba  never  can  be  free  in  the  meaning 
they  now  give  to  the  word.  At  first  a  realization  of  this  truth  will  come 
as  a  shock  to  many  able  and  honest  citizens  who  assisted  in  driving  Spain 
from  their  country.  Before  the  inhabitants  agree  that  independence  can 
never  come  to  Cuba,  it  is  even  possible  that  the  island  will  have  to  pass 
through  another  ordeal  of  fire." 

While  the  conditions  referred  to  by  Mr.  Whelpley  were  being  brought 
about,  it  was  announced  that  the  street  railways  of  Havana  had  passed 
under  control  of  "promoters"  known  to  be  identical  with  the  Standard  Oil 
and  Sugar  trust  interest,  and  in  the  Philippines  after  the  islands  had  been 
occupied  by  agents  of  similar  combinations  of  financiers  as  able,  enterpris 
ing  and  aggressive  as  Drake  or  Lafitte,  war  had  been  begun  with  our  late 


AN  AMERICAN  COMMONER.  263 

allies,  the  Filipinos  and  their  flag  also  was  pulled  down  for  purposes  de 
scribed  by  President  McKinley  as  "benevolent  assimilation." 

Through  all  this,  Mr.  Bland  had  kept  his  faith  in  the  principles  of 
free  and  constitutional  government.  He  returned  to  Washington,  and  on 
January  30,  1899,  made  his  speech  on  "English  Plutocracy  and  the  Liberties 
of  the  World,"  in  which  he  championed  the  unfortunate  people  of  the 
Philippines  as  he  had  spoken  before  for  those  of  Cuba,  Puerto  Rico  and 
Hawaii. 

From  1873,  when,  in  his  first  recorded  speech  in  politics,  he  declared 
that  the  flag  of  the  United  States  must  stand  for  "liberty  and  justice  to  all 
men  whether  they  be  red,  black,  white,  olive  or  tawny-colored" — from 
that  noble  beginning  to  the  end,  when,  regardless  of  what  others  said  or 
did,  he  still  spoke  for  the  liberty  of  all  men,  of  all  races  and  all  countries, 
he  had  kept  in  all  simplicity,  without  malice  and  without  hypocrisy,  the 
faith  of  an  American  Commoner.  When  he  died,  June  15,  1899,  his  work 
was  done  and  it  had  been  done  so  well  that  no  power  of  money  or  of  organ 
ization  or  of  the  shrewdness  of  those  who  make  selfish  advantage  their  rule 
of  right  will  ever  undo  it,  or  change  the  least  part  of  its  beneficent  results. 
It  belongs  to  the  always  increasing  potency  of  higher  civilization,  and  it 
will  realize  itself  in  greater  things  than  we  can  now  imagine. 


CHAPTER  XXX. 

Mr.  Eland's  Early  Home  in  Kentucky.— The  Stock  From  Which  He  Sprang.— His 
Life  as  an  Orphan  Boy  on  a  Farm. — At  the  Plow  in  Summer  and  at  School  in 
Winter. — He  Emigrates  to  Missouri  and  to  California. — His  Life  in  the  Mines. 
— Cooking  and  Washing  for  Orphan  Children. — He  Studies  Law  and  Returns  to 
Missouri. — His  Characteristics  as  a  Lawyer. — His  Work  Before  Election  Boards 
Under  the  Drake  Constitution. — Judge  C.  C.  Eland's  Reminiscences  of  His 
Mother. 

BY  JUDGE  CHARLES  C.  BLAND.* 

jICHARD  P.  ELAND'S  father,  Stouten  Edward  Bland,  was 
born  July  14,  i8o7.  He  was  reared  near  Lebanon,  Ky.,  on  a 
farm  which  is  now  owned  by  Proctor  Knott.  His  ances 
tors  emigrated  from  Virginia  to  Kentucky  at  a  very  early 
day.  His  wife,  Margaret  Parks  Nail,  eldest  daughter  of  Richards  Parks 
Nail  and  Polly  Nail  (nee  Berryman),  was  born  at  Hartford,  Ohio  county, 
Ky.,  June  4,  1816.  S.  E.  Bland  and  Margaret  P.  Nail  were  married  at 
Hartford,  Ky.,  October  9,  1834. 

Richard  Parks  Bland,  the  eldest  child  of  this  union  was  born  August 
I9>  J835>  at  Hartford.  S.  E.  Bland  moved  from  Hartford  to  Eland's  Mills, 
ten  miles  above  Hartford,  on  the  Hartford  river,  in  the  year  1838.  Here 
he  procured  the  establishment  of  "Eland's  Mills"  as  a  postoffice,  and  he  him 
self  was  appointed  postmaster  by  Amos  Kendall,  who  was  then  postmaster 
general  in  General  Jackson's  cabinet.  Early  in  1841  Stouten  Bland  gave 
up  the  management  of  his  mill  business,  because  of  ill  health,  and  moved 
his  residence  to  a  farm,  about  midway  between  the  mill  and  Hartford.  He 
continued  to  live  on  this  farm  until  his  death,  which  occurred  June  5,  1842. 


*Mr.  Eland's  brother,  presiding  judge  St.  Louis  court  of  appeals.  Judge  Bland  says  in  transmitting 
his  reminiscences  to  the  editor:  "After  my  tenth  year  my  brother  and  I  were  separated  for  many  years 
and  I  never  saw  him  until  he  came  to  Rolla  in  1867.  I  will  add  one  thing  here,  that  is,  that  while  we 
practiced  together,  I  never  discovered  that  he  was  in  error  as  to  the  law  of  a  case— his  judgment  on  a  law 
point  seemed  to  be  unerring  at  all  times  " 


AN  AMERICAN  COMMONER.  265 

After  his  death  his  widow  with  four  children  remained  on  the  farm  for 
a  year,  when  she  removed  to  the  home  of  her  mother  who  was  then  a 
widow.  In  1844  she  married  Francis  Black,  a  farmer  in  the  neighborhood, 
and  her  son,  Richard,  went  with  her  to  the  home  of  Mr.  Black,  where  he 
remained  until  the  death  of  his  mother,  December  20,  1849.  After  the 
death  of  his  mother  he  worked  as  a  farm  hand  for  wages  during  the  spring 
and  summer  and  went  to  school  during  the  fall  and  winter.  Mr.  Craig — 
I  wish  I  could  recall  his  given  name* — who  resided  near  Beaver  Dam,  was 
his  fast  and  valuable  friend  during  this  period,  helping  him  to  attend 
school,  and  giving  him  a  home  at  his  house,  whenever  he  chose  to  make  it 
there.  Richard  finished  his  scholastic  education  at  the  age  of  nineteen  by 
graduating  from  the  Hartford  Academy,  then  the  best  school  in  that  section 
of  the  state.  After  leaving  school,  he  emigrated  to  Missouri  and  went  to 
Wayne  county,  to  the  home  of  Robert  Fulton,  who  had  married  Mariah 
Nail,  the  youngest  sister  of  his  mother.  He  taught  school  for  three  months 
in  Wayne  county,  making  his  home  with  his  aunt.  In  1855,  Mr.  Fulton  sold 
his  property  in  Wayne  county,  and  emigrated  to  California  with  his  family, 
by  way  of  New  York  and  the  isthmus.  Richard  accompanied  them.  After 
reaching  California  they  engaged  in  mining,  but  Mr.  Fulton  soon  sickened 
and  died.  His  wife  followed  him  in  a  short  time,  leaving  three  small 
children  to  be  cared  for  by  Richard.  He  continued  mining  and  took  care  of 
the  children,  doing  cooking  and  washing  for  them  and  himself,  until  ar 
rangements  were  made  to  return  them  to  Missouri.  They  embarked  on  a 
steamer  for  New  York  with  an  uncle  (Fulton).  When  the  vessel  was 


*Isaiah  Craig,  who  was  still  alive  during  the  campaign  of  1896.  Mr.  Bland  heard  from  him  as  a 
result  of  correspondence  growing  out  of  an  invitation  to  visit  his  old  home  in  Kentucky,  among  the 
signatures  to  which  appeared  the  name  "Isaiah  Craig;"  supposing  this  to  be  the  son  of  his  old  friend, 
Mr.  Bland  wrote: 

"That  I  had  many  trials  you  all  know,  for  as  an  orphan  boy  I  was  thrown  on  my  own  resources  to 
work  my  way  through  life  as  best  I  could.  Yet  I  had  many  sympathizing  friends  who  gave  me  a  helping 
hand,  Isaiah  Craig  was  one.  I  am  informed  he  has  gone  to  the  unknown  land  beyond  the  dark  waters 
and  if  the  good  and  kind  are  rewarded  there  for  their  acts  here,  then  Isaiah  Craig  is  blessed.  I  take  it  for 
granted  that  the  'Isaiah  Craig'  who  signs  this  letter  is  the  son  of  the  greatest  benefactor  of  my  youth." 

On  learning  that  the  signature  was  that  of  his  old  friend  in  person,  Mr.  Bland  opened  correspon 
dence  with  him  and  sent  him  money. 


266  AN  AMERICAN  COMMONER. 

about  three  miles  from  shore,  it  took  fire  and  was  burned  to  the  water's 
edge.  The  uncle  and  three  boys  jumped  overboard,  and  undertook  to  swim 
ashore,  but  the  uncle  and  two  of  the  boys  were  drowned.  George  (about 
nine  years  old)  swam  or  floated  ashore  and  was  sent  back  to  Missouri.* 

Mining  in  California  not  proving  profitable,  Richard  went  to  Nevada, 
studied  law,  was  admitted  to  practice,  and  served  as  treasurer  of  Carson 
county.  In  i867  he  returned  to  Missouri  and  formed  a  partnership  with 
his  brother  C.  C.  Bland  who  had  opened  a  law  office  at  Rolla,  Missouri. 
This  partnership  continued  until  1869  when  Richard  went  to  Lebanon, 
Mo.,  and  opened  an  office  there.  He  continued  to  practice  law  in  Laclede 
county  and  counties  adjacent  to  it,  until  his  first  election  to  Congress  in 
i872.  After  that  date,  he  was  not  actively  engaged  in  the  practice  of  his 
profession. 

When  a  boy,  Richard  was  very  active  and  fond  of  athletic  sports.  He 
was  ambitious,  determined  and  unfaltering  in  his  purposes.  His  youth 
was  spent  on  a  farm,  with  an  occasional  three  months  term  of  school  in 
the  winter.  He  was  devoted  to  his  mother,  and  to  his  brothers  and  sisters. 
Their  needs  and  their  welfare  were  always  his  first  thoughts.  His  own  came 
afterwards  if  at  all.  He  was  studious,  learned  rapidly  at  school,  and  after  he 
was  fifteen  years  of  age  never  lost  a  moment's  opportunity  to  improve  his 
mind  by  reading  and  study.  He  was  fond  of  debating  societies,  joining  them 
whenever  he  could  do  so.  He  never  failed  to  take  an  active  part  in  their 
debates.  In  debate  and  in  every  other  way,  he  was  fearless.  If  the  ele 
ment  of  fear  was  in  his  nature,  it  was  never  perceptible,  but  he  was  not 
quarrelsome. 

With  his  active  mind  and  body  he  could  not  be  lazy  or  indolent,  and 
it  was  the  universal  opinion  of  his  elders,  who  knew  him  well  that  he  would 
distinguish  himself,  if  he  should  live  to  become  a  man. 

As  a  lawyer,  he  was  a  formidable  antagonist  at  any  bar.  He  was 
well  grounded  in  the  principles  and  doctrines  of  the  common  law.  Always 

*He  now  resides  in  Philadelphia. 


AN  AMERICAN  COMMONER.  267 

reasoning  out  his  conclusions  from  common  law  maxims  and  doctrines, 
it  rarely  happened  that  he  failed  to  reach  a  correct  conclusion  as  to  the 
law  of  his  case.  He  tolerated  no  wrong  to  his  client.  Making  the  client's 
case  his  own,  he  was  more  deeply  concerned  for  the  success  of  right 
principles  in  important  cases  than  were  his  clients  themselves.  Nor  would 
he  submit  to  unfairness  from  the  opposite  counsel  or  from  the  judge  on 
the  bench. 

He  first  attracted  general  notice  and  won  his  first  popularity  with 
democrats  in  southwest  Missouri  by  defending  rejected  voters,  before 
boards  of  revision,  operated  under  the  Drake  Constitution.  He  was  re 
markably  fearless  but  always  courteous  before  these  boards  and  seldom 
failed  to  have  his  client's  name  put  on  the  list  of  qualified  voters.  For  these 
services  he  would  take  no  fee,  declaring  that  his  work  against  political  pro 
scription  was  a  public  duty,  done  for  the  good  of  the  state. 

I  know  so  little  about  our  father  that  I  am  unable  to  give  the  names 
of  his  parents  or  brothers  and  sisters.  From  a  neighbor,  who  was  his  inti 
mate  friend,  I  learned  when  a  child,  that  father  was  a  well  educated  man 
for  his  period,  was  a  school  teacher  when  he  married  mother,  that  he  was 
a  man  of  great  personal  courage,  and  very  religious.  I  have  his  Bible, 
which  shows  by  marginal  notes  and  references,  which  I  believe  were  made 
by  him,  that  he  studied  the  book  with  great  care.  Both  parents  were  mem 
bers  of  the  Methodist  church,  and  I  have  been  told  that  father  preached 
occasionally  in  the  little  log  church  near  our  home.  Of  mother,  I  have 
very  vivid  memories — so  much  so,  that  were  I  an  artist  I  believe  I  could 
reproduce  her  exact  likeness  on  canvas.  She  was  a  patient  woman,  full  of 
kindness,  and  in  answer  to  calls  for  help  in  sickness,  doing  more  volunteer 
nursing  than  any  other  woman  in  the  neighborhood.  When  one  of  her 
brothers  or  sisters  were  sick,  no  one  could  nurse  them  but  "Margaret." 
When  a  neighbor  was  sick  if  it  were  possible  her  services  were  secured. 
In  1849  an  epidemic  of  typhoid  fever  prevailed  in  the  neighborhood,  and 
she  continued  nursing  its  victims  until  she  was  stricken  with  the  disease. 


268  AN  AMERICAN  COMMONER. 

The  fever  proved  fatal  in  her  case,  as  it  did  generally  in  the  country  at 
that  time.  She  was  a  most  devoted  mother,  and  a  very  sensible  woman. 
Her  life  was  one  of  toil,  but  one  of  service  spent  in  doing  good,  and  in 
making  those  around  her  happy.  To  my  recollection  she  had  the  kindest 
face  and  the  most  sympathetic  eyes  ever  I  looked  into,  and  if  I  could  paint 
her,  I  would  put  a  halo  of  glory  around  her  head,  and  rays  of  divine  light 
in  her  eyes.  "Dick"  had  a  heart  like  his  mother's.  I  could  pay  him  no 
higher  compliment. 


CHAPTER  XXXI. 

Mr.  Eland's  Boyhood  in  Kentucky. — Mrs.  Bland  Investigates  and  Interviews  His 
Kinsfolk  and  Old  Neighbors. — Shorthand  Report  of  an  Interview  Between  Mrs. 
Bland  and  Mr.  Eland's  Uncle,  Mr.  Frank  Nail,  of  Ohio  County,  Kentucky. — 
How  Mr.  Bland  Got  His  Characteristics.— His  Truthfulness  as  a  Boy.— The  Fights 
He  Was  Forced  Into. — He  is  Tempted  to  Become  a  Preacher. — Stops  Driving 
Oxen  and  Decides  to  use  His  Intellect.— The  Use  of  Beech  Limbs  by  His  School- 
Master. — The  Questions  He  Debated  as  a  Boy. — His  First  Speech  and  the  Repu 
tation  it  Made  Him. — Life  on  No  Creek  in  the  Days  of  Henry  Clay. 

N  COLLECTING  material  for  this  volume,  Mrs.  Bland 
spent  several  weeks  of  the  spring  of  1900  in  Ohio  county, 
Kentucky,  visiting  the  house  in  which  Mr.  Bland  was  born, 
the  scenes  of  his  childhood  and  of  his  youthful  struggles, 
and  gathering  carefully  from  surviving  relatives  and  friends  who  had 
known  him  in  youth,  such  reminiscences  of  him  as  best  illustrate  his  char 
acter.  In  that  country  of  contentment  and  good  neighborliness,  where  they 
speak  the  English  of  Addison's  time  and  have  not  wholly  lost  the  spirit  of 
Queen  Anne's  reign,  they  live  still  in  the  "story  and  a  half"  houses  of  the 
colonial  era,  and  know  the  names  of  their  grandfathers  and  great-grand 
fathers  as  well  as  they  do  the  pedigrees  of  their  horses. 

Out  of  houses  of  hewn  logs,  built  when  Clay  and  Jackson  were  rivals 
for  the  leadership  of  North  America,  Mrs.  Bland  might  easily  have  secured 
authentic  pedigrees  of  the  Bland,  the  Nail  and  the  Parks  families,  enough 
in  themselves  to  make  a  volume  larger  than  this,  but  instead  of  doing  so, 
she  took  a  stenographer  with  her  and  "interviewed"  Mr.  Bland's  old  neigh 
bors  and  his  kinsfolk — asking  leading  questions  with  the  pertinacity  of  a 
veteran  interviewer,  the  stenographer  taking  down  both  question  and 
answer  in  shorthand.  These  interviews  were  intended  only  for  the  editor's 
information,  but  that  of  Mrs.  Bland  with  Mr.  Frank  Nail,  brother  of  Mr. 

Bland's  mother,  is  too  interesting  in  itself,  and  too  valuable  as  documentary 

269 


270  AN  AMERICAN  COMMONER. 

evidence,  to  be  omitted — especially  as  Mrs.  Eland's  questions  are  often 
not  less  informing  than  the  answers  themselves.  Mr.  Nail  is  now  over 
seventy-six  years  of  age. 

MRS.  BLAND  INTERVIEWS  MR.  ELAND'S  KENTUCKY  UNCLE. 

"Mr.  Nail,"  said  Mrs.  Bland  in  opening.  "I  wish  to  learn  where  Mr. 
Bland  got  his  characteristics.  I  have  an  idea  that  he  took  his  firmness  from 
his  father  and  his  goodness  from  his  mother." 

"He  did — as  far  as  I  am  capable  of  judging,"  replied  Mr.  Nail.  "Mr. 
Eland's  father  was  a  school  teacher  and  I  went  to  school  to  him.  At  the 
time  of  his  death  I  was  about  ten  years  old.  We  lived  close  together  and 
I  was  often  at  his  house.  I  had  a  chance  to  know  him  as  well  as  any  person 
of  my  age  could  have  done.  He  was  a  man  of  more  than  ordinary  intelli 
gence,  and  had  a  high  education  for  that  day.  That  is,  he  had  a  good 
English  education.  You  didn't  find  men  in  those  days  as  well  educated  as 
they  are  now.  A  man  with  a  good  English  education  at  that  time  was 
considered  a  well-educated  man." 

"You  say  he  was  firm  ?"  "Yes,  he  was  a  man  of  firmness.  His  word 
was  just  as  solid  as  a  rock.  He  was  a  man  everybody  had  the  utmost  con 
fidence  in." 

"Do  you  think  he  possessed  the  quality  Mr.  Bland  had  of  looking 
into  a  question  and  making  up  his  mind,  and  sticking  to  it  ?"  "Yes  he  was 
true  to  his  convictions." 

"Now,  about  his  mother.  Was  she  a  firm  woman?"  "Yes.  You 
know  how  Methodist  people  were  raised — very  strictly.  She  was  raised 
by  a  pious  mother,  and  she  would  regard  a  falsehood,  or  anything  wrong 
with  as  much  disfavor  as  we  would  a  calamity." 

"I  see  uncle  J.  C.  Berryman,  of  Caledonia,  made  the  statement  in  the 
papers  that  Mr.  Bland  never  told  a  lie.  Mr.  Bland  laughed  at  that.  But 
I  suppose  he  was  a  truthful  boy?"  "Yes,  he  was  so  regarded.  The  peo 
ple  of  Ohio  county  had  the  utmost  confidence  in  his  father,  and  in  him. 


AN  AMERICAN  COMMONER.  271 

They  knew  his  father,  and  knew  that  Dick  was  of  the  same  quality.  Be 
cause  of  his  natural  intelligence  and  honesty  he  never  lacked  a  friend.  I 
can  remember  when  I  first  saw  him.  He  was  a  little  baby  playing  on  the 
carpet  on  the  floor,  and  my  mother  used  to  let  me  go  over  to  Mr.  Eland's. 
It  was  about  a  mile.  I  was  very  much  attached  to  him.  I  loved  to  play 
with  him.  It  was  a  great  enjoyment  to  me,  always,  to  see  him  laugh  and 
enjoy  himself.  It  might  have  been  that  I  was  prejudiced  towards  him  be 
cause  he  was  close  kin,  but  others  seemed  to  think  as  I  did.  As  he  grew 
and  got  older,  he  grew  more  attractive.  He  had  more  natural  intelligence 
about  him  than  was  common  to  most  children.  He  was  quick  to  catch 
anything,  and  quick  to  learn  anything,  and  he  never  forgot  anything  he 
got  hold  of." 

"It  Is  said  he  had  fights  when  he  was  a  boy?"  "Yes,  that  got  out  in 
this  way,  I  suppose.  He  had  been  tried  by  the  boys.  You  know  it  is 
common  when  boys  get  together  that  some  of  them  always  want  to  get  up 
a  fight  between  others,  and  don't  wan't  to  get  into  it  themselves.  They 
always  tried  to  ring  him  in.  They  had  a  way  there  of  trying  boys'  pluck. 
I  think  they  tried  him  once  or  twice  to  their  sorrow.  While  he  never 
sought  a  fight,  he  would  undoubtedly  fight." 

"I  have  a  general  impression  that  Mr.  Bland  was  a  great  hand  at 
debate?"  "Yes,  he  used  to  attend  those  debating  societies.  They  would 
take  up  some  theory,  and  debate  it.  Dick  was  a  great  favorite  among  the 
debating  societies,  and  he  had  the  reputation  of  being  hard  to  turn  down. 
He  had  a  great  deal  more  than  ordinary  intelligence  in  that  line.  He 
was  a  natural  debater." 

"Did  Mr.  Bland  have  his  hearty  laugh  as  a  boy?"  "Yes,  he  had  always 
retained  that  from  the  time  I  first  saw  him.  I  never  saw  him  after  he  left 
here  in  his  nineteenth  year.  Up  to  that  time  he  was  always  full  of  laughter 
and  merry.  He  never  seemed  to  take  trouble  at  all,  but  was  always  in  a 
good  humor — full  of  laughter  and  fun." 


272  AN  AMERICAN  COMMONER. 

"Do  you  remember  any  incidents  or  have  any  reminiscences  about  him 
Mr.  Nail  ?  Mrs.  Perkins  told  me  about  his  driving  oxen  and  plowing  and 
sitting  on  the  fence.  Do  you  remember  the  remark  he  made  on  that  occa 
sion?"  "I  don't  suppose  there  was  any  work  to  be  done  on  a  farm  by  a 
boy  that  he  had  not  done — driving  oxen,  hoeing,  plowing,  etc.  I  think 
he  was  some  ten  or  twelve  years  old  when  his  mother  died.  He  had  not 
gone  to  school  any  except  what  he  got  through  the  winter  when  he  lived 
at  Black's.  After  his  mother  died,  he  tried  Dr.  Downard's  a  while.  He 
offered  him  a  situation,  and  he  went  there  to  live,  but  he  hired  out  to  Mr. 
Craig  by  the  month  and  not  to  Mr.  Downard.  Mr.  Craig,  you-  know,  was 
a  farmer,  and  as  a  general  rule  they  rise  very  early  and  get  their  work 
through  before  the  heat  of  the  day.  He  would  work  there  through  the 
spring  and  summer  and  go  to  school  in  the  winter,  and  attend  those  debat 
ing  societies,  and  study  at  night.  Mr.  Craig  was  a  very  good  scholar  and 
he  took  great  pains  in  tutoring  Dick,  and  he  did  not  require  Dick  to  pay 
him  for  anything  he  could  do  for  him.  He  seemed  willing  to  help  him  in  any 
way  he  could,  and  did. 

"Mr.  Bland  sent  him  some  money  in  his  last  days  did  he  not?" 
"Yes,  a  check  for  $50.  That  was  a  present  in  remembrance  of  his  kind 
ness  to  him." 

"Mrs.  Mitchell  told  me  that  he  was  plowing  one  day,  and  that  he 
stopped  after  he  had  made  one  or  two  rows,  and  sat  down  on  the  fence 
to  rest,  and  took  up  a  stick  and  began  to  whittle  on  it,  and  remarked  that  he 
could  do  better  than  that,  and  that  he  did  not  intend  to  drive  oxen  all  his 
life."  "Yes,  he  always  said  that  he  never  expected  to  get  a  living  by  hard 
labor — that  he  was  not  built  that  way.  That  is  the  reason  he  applied  him 
self  to  study.  I  remember  that  when  he  lived  at  Mr.  Craig's  and  attended 
school  there  in  the  neighborhood,  the  teacher  who  taught  there  was  only  the 
ordinary  country  school  teacher.  I  think  Dick  got  to  believe  that  he  could 
teach  the  teacher,  and  I  expect  he  could  in  some  things.  I  don't  think  he 
had  gone  to  school  there.  I  believe  he  was  about  sixteen  then  when  he 


MR.  BLAND  AS  A  YOUNG  LAWYER. 

(From  a   Photograph   taken   in  Virginia  City, 

Nevada,  Prior  to  18G5.) 


MRS.  BLAND  AT  NINETEEN. 
(From  a  Photograph  taken  Shortly  before  Her  Marriage.) 


AN  AMERICAN  COMMONER.  273 

himself  began  teaching  in  that  neighborhood.  It  was  an  old  log  house, 
which  stood  upon  a  hill — the  White  Oak  schoolhouse.  It  is  on  the 
waters  of  No  Creek,  No  Creek  schoolhouse  being  further  down  in  a 

different  neighborhood I  remember  that  Mr.  Ellis  lived  near  me 

when  Dick  was  living  at  Craig's.  Our  farms  joined — Craig's,  Ellis's,  and 
mine.  Craig  married  Ellis's  oldest  daughter.  Old  man  Ellis  and  wife 
thought  there  was  no  one  like  Dick.  Ed  Ellis  and  Dick  used  to  run  to 
gether.  They  thought  the  world  and  all  of  each  other.  He  would  come 
up  there  sometimes,  and  spend  Saturday  night  and  Sunday  with  Ellis, 
and  sometimes  a  whole  week  when  he  wasn't  busy.  Dick  was  very  fond 
of  a  gun  and  hunting." 

"He  used  to  tell  me  that  there  was  somebody  there  that  had  hounds," 
said  Mrs.  Bland.  "He  said  he  would  go  hunting  for  opossum  and  'coon, 
and  that  that  was  the  way  he  made  his  Christmas  money?"  "Yes, 
the  boys  use  to  make  pocket  change  selling  the  hides  of  'coons,  mink,  etc., 
and  at  the  same  time  they  had  their  fun.  One  of  the  Ellis  boys  lives  up 
on  No  Creek  now — Alex  Ellis,  half  brother  to  Ed.  I  expect  Dick  was  the 
older." 

"Did  not  Mr.  Ellis  and  Mr.  Craig  think  they  would  make  a  preacher 
of  Mr.  Bland  once?"  "Yes,  he  had  some  notion  of  it  once.  You  see 
they  were  what  we  called  Campbellites,  but  they  are  called  Christians  here 
now.  You  know  there  is  a  good  deal  of  rivalry  between  churches.  Dick 
was  raised  a  Methodist.  They  would  read  the  scriptures  to  Dick  and 
explain  them  to  him.  I  will  tell  you  an  incident:  While  he  lived  at 
Craig's  he  asked  my  opinion  if  I  thought  he  was  calculated  for  a  preacher. 
I  said  I  believed  he  was  not.  I  remember  he  laughed,  and  said  it  was  his 
opinion,  and  that  Mr.  Ellis  and  Mr.  Craig  had  been  trying  to  persuade 
him  to  go  into  the  ministry.  I  asked  him  what  kind  of  a  preacher  he 
would  be.  He  said  'I  will  be  a  Campbellite  of  course.'  I  said  'you  were 
raised  a  Methodist.'  He  said  'Yes,  but  I  have  been  studying  the  Bible, 

and  I  believe  the  Campbellites  are  right.'     He  said  that  he  would  not  argue 
18 


274  AN  AMERICAN  COMMONER. 

scripture  with  me  at  all,  and  for  me  to  just  do  as  I  pleased " 

"Was  he  inclined  to  argue  very  much?"  "Yes,  he  was  fond  of 
argument,  but  I  don't  think  he  was  any  hand  to  argue  for  argument's  sake. 
If  he  had  an  idea  and  was  upholding  the  right,  he  would  contend  for  his 
position  to  the  last." 

"Had  he  any  of  idea  of  what  he  would  be  when  he  left  Kentucky?" 
"No,  I  saw  him  a  short  time  before  he  left,  and  he  told  me  he  was  going 
to  Missouri,  and  go  to  school.  Charlie  (Judge  C.  C.  Bland)  was  out 
there  at  Arcadia,  going  to  school,  and  I  supposed  they  had  got  Dick  to 
come.  I  don't  know  how  long  he  went  to  school.  I  think  he  taught 
school,  and  went,  too;  but  I  think  he  acquired  most  of  his  education  by 
chance.  There  are  some  people  naturally  smart  you  know,  and  I  always 
thought  Dick  was  one  of  them.  He  had  not  many  educational  advan- 

tages." 

"Mrs.  Mitchell  tells  me  that  his  mother  was  a  very  good  woman?" 

"Yes,  she  was  my  sister,  and  everyone  thinks  his  own  kind  are  everything 
they  should  be.  I  have  seen  her  tried,  and  I  think  she  was  as  good  a 
woman  as  ever  lived.  She  was  perfectly  calm,  and  never  took  any  trou 
ble." 

"Do  you  remember  where  Mr.    Bland    was    born?"     "Yes.     The 

place  is  about  a  mile  above  the  mill.  Mr.  Armendt  lives  there  now. 
There  were  three  little  places  there.  My  father  owned  all  of  them.  You 
know  we  had  no  frame  or  brick  houses  then.  This  was  a  neat  log  house, 
and  my  recollection  is  that  it  had  one  room,  twenty  feet  square.  What 
we  would  call  a  nice  hewed-log  house.  It  had  a  white  ash  floor,  and  then 
there  was  a  little  porch  between  that  and  what  was  called  the  kitchen.  It 
had  a  loft  room  above.  That  was  the  size  of  the  house.  After  Mr.  Bland 
moved  away  from  there  I  think  a  man  by  the  name  of  Mason  became  the 
purchaser,  and  he  lived  in  the  same  house,  for  a  good  many  years.  When 
he  died  the  place  fell  into  the  hands  of  Mr.  Armendt." 

When  asked  to  give  his  reminiscences  of  the  school  he  attended  with 


AN  AMERICAN  COMMONER.  275 

Mr.  Bland,  Mr.  James  F.  Carson,  of  Hartford,  Ky.,  said: 

"The  teacher  was  Mr.  John  F.  Park  who  was  educated  in  Penn 
sylvania.  The  school  was  at  No  Creek.  One  of  the  modes  of  punishment 
in  Kentucky  schools  then  was  to  use  beech  limbs  as  long  as  room  would 
admit  of.  Teachers  would  whip  the  boys  on  the  legs  about  half  way 
between  the  knees  and  feet.  As  boys  went  bare-footed  in  the  summer 
time  the  soles  of  their  feet  would  get  quite  tough  and  would  generally  be 
used  as  a  fender  to  ward  off  the  blows.  The  punishment  would  cause  them 
to  stand  first  on  one  foot  and  then  on  the  other.  The  girls  he  would  whip 
on  their  backs.  I  have  seen  them  gather  pennyroyal  and  stuff  down 
their  backs  as  a  protection.  Another  mode  was  to  make  the  convict 
stand  in  the  corner  behind  the  teacher's  chair.  That  was  the  fun 
niest  mode  of  all,  for  when  he  would  be  busy  I,  or  the  others,  would 
pull  one  hair  of  his  head  at  a  time  to  see  him  scratch.  This  often  caused 
a  laugh  and  caused  us  to  get  the  'rod/  as  he  called  it.  The  seats  were 
made  of  slabs  with  auger  holes  bored  in  them  with  beech  limbs  inserted  for 
legs,  or  sometimes  they  split  timber  out  with  an  axe,  very  rudely  done, 
— what  might  be  called  'rustic  work/  The  tops  of  seats  were  at  different 
levels,  some  low,  some  high.  The  high  ones  were  the  dunce  blocks/' 

Mr.  John  S.  Thomas,  of  Hartford,  another  of  Mr.  Eland's  school 
mates,  recalls  that  boys  who  were  being  trained  for  future  masters  of 
America  were  sometimes  lifted  bodily  from  the  floor  by  the  ear  as  a 
means  of  disciplining  them.  In  spite  of  this,  the  schools  were  a  means  of 
stimulating  intellect.  Their  debating  societies  made  every  Kentucky  boy 
a  possible  statesman,  waiting  his  opportunity  to  show  his  talents.  Of 
such  debates,  Mr.  J.  S.  Fitzhugh  said  to  Mrs.  Bland: 

"During  our  schoolboy  days  we  would  frequently  have  debates  in 
the  neighborhood,  and  among  the  questions  brought  up  for  discussion 
I  remember  one  of  them  that  was  stated  something  like  this :  'Who  de 
serves  the  greater  praise,  Columbus  for  discovering  America,  or  Wash 
ington  for  defending  human  liberty  ?'  ' 


276  AN  AMERICAN  COMMONER. 

"One  I  remember,"  said  a  neighbor  present,  "was :  'Which  is  the  more 
attractive  to  the  eye,  the  works  of  nature  or  the  works  of  man?' " 

"Another,"  continued  Mr.  Fitzhugh,  "was:  'Which  furnishes  the 
greatest  pleasure,  pursuit  or  possession  ?' ': 

To  this,  Mr.  James  A.  Sullenger,  of  Hartford,  Ky.,  adds : 

"Mr.  Bland  and  I  went  to  school  together.  It  was  about  the  second 
school  I  ever  went  to,  I  think.  I  heard  him  make  the  first  speech  he  ever 
made.  There  were  about  fifteen  of  us  boys,  and  he  made  the  best  and 
only  speech  that  was  made  by  any  of  us.  The  balance  of  us  were  all 
scared,  except  Dick,  and  he  was  not  scared  one  bit.  I  remember  feeling 
ashamed  of  myself;  I  did  not  have  the  pluck  that  Mr.  Bland  had.  I 
remember  my  uncle  who  was  teacher  saying  that  he  did  not  see  why 
the  balance  of  us  boys  could  not  talk  as  Mr.  Bland  did.  The  school  was 
taught  after  his  father's  death  at  what  was  called  the  Bland  house." 


CHAPTER  XXXII. 

MRS.  ELAND'S  REMINISCENCES— I. 

Mrs.  Bland  Writes  Her  Reminiscences  of  Mr.  Eland's  Home  Life.— Their  First 
Meeting  When  She  Was  a  Schoolgirl.— Mr.  Bland  as  a  Confirmed  Old  Bach 
elor  in  Love  for  the  Second  Time. — He  Tells  Mrs.  Bland  of  His  Romance  at 
Nineteen.— The  Girl  in  White  Apron  aud  Sun  Bonnet  Who  Died  After  Marry 
ing  to  Please  Her  Parents.— Mr.  Bland  Corresponds  With  Mrs.  B.'s  Father.— 
The  Story  of  a  Threatened  Elopement. — At  Washington  Under  Grant. — South 
ern  Pianos  as  Presents. — Mr.  Eland's  Love  of  Children. — His  Domestic  Habits. 
— Sitting  up  all  Night  on  His  Last  Night  in  Congress. — His  Last  Illness  and 
Death. 

BY  MRS.  RICHARD  PARKS  BLAND. 

|  MET  Mr.  Bland  first  at  Caledonia,  Mo.,  where  I  was  attend 
ing  the  Bellevue' Collegiate  Institute.     He  had  been  to  New 
Orleans  to  look  into  the  matter  of  deepening  the  channel  of 
the  Mississippi  river  by  means  of  jetties  and  had  come  to 
Caledonia  to  visit  his  sister,  Mrs.  Goodykoontz,  before  returning  to  Wash 
ington. 

Mr.  Bland  had  known  my  father  and  had  practiced  law  in  the  same 
courts  with  him.  When  he  was  first  introduced  to  me  I  had  just  passed 
nineteen — being  nineteen  in  May,  and  this  was  the  tenth  of  June.  Mr. 
Bland  was  thirty-eight  the  coming  August. 

I  had  taught  school  when  I  was  only  seventeen  years  old  and  after  at 
tending  school  at  Caledonia,  I  would  have  continued  to  teach,  had  not  Mr. 
Bland,  as  he  said  himself,  "broken  up  the  school"  I  expected  to  teach.  When 
I  first  met  him  at  the  Bellevue  Collegiate  Institute,  the  young  ladies  of  our 
school  were  making  Latin  mottoes  in  evergreens  for  decoration  at  com 
mencement.  The  motto  was  "I  came,  I  saw,  I  conquered."  I  told  him 
if  he  wished  to  stay  he  would  have  to  help  with  the  work  of  preparing 
the  motto.  He  did  so,  staying  until  we  had  completed  the  work.  The 

girls  had  a  literary  society,  presided  over  by  Professor  McKinney,  the 

277 


278  AN  AMERICAN  COMMONER. 

principal  of  the  school.  I  was  vice-president.  We  had  an  open  session 
and  a  debate  on  the  subject :  "Which  influences  our  lives  most,  hope  or 
memory?"  I  led  one  side  and  Miss  Hatcher,  daughter  of  Congressman 
Hatcher,  the  other.  Mr.  Bland  was  present  that  night  and  said  after 
wards:  "Why  did  you  not  tell  me  you  were  going  to  talk?  I  would 
have  given  you  the  bouquet  I  promised  to  another  young  lady."  When 
school  adjourned  Mr.  Bland  accompanied  me  as  far  as  Victoria,  a  small 
town  on  the  Iron  Mountain  road,  near  Hillsboro,  where  I  was  to  visit  my 
uncle,  Judge  John  L.  Thomas.  My  uncle,  my  aunt,  a  young  lady  friend 
and  myself  went  to  Potosi  and  took  the  train  there.  Mr.  Bland  came  out, 
and  helped  us  on  and  after  managing  to  put  my  friend  (who  was  going  to 
visit  me)  with  another  young  lady,  he  sat  down  by  me  himself.  Then 
he  wrote  to  me  at  Hillsboro,  and  soon  afterwards  I  told  my  father  I  had 
met  him  and  asked  what  he  thought  of  him.  Mr.  Bland  never  was  effu 
sive  in  his  manners,  and  my  father  said  he  liked  him  very  well,  but  that  he 
was  "as  cold  as  a  wagon  tire."  When  he  found  how  much  mistaken 
he  was  in  his  judgment,  he  had  to  stand  a  good  deal  of  joking  because  of 
this  answer. 

Mr.  Bland  had  at  that  time  the  reputation  of  a  confirmed  old  bach 
elor  and  stories  have  been  published  that  he  had  some  difficulty  in  convinc 
ing  my  father  that  I  had  made  the  best  choice  possible  for  a  girl  of  nine 
teen.  My  father  never  really  objected  but  he  was  away  from  home  when 
Mr.  Bland  wrote  asking  his  consent  to  a  marriage,  and,  as  the  letter 
remained  unanswered,  Mr.  Bland  wrote  him  that  he  hoped  the  marriage 
would  take  place — with  his  consent  if  possible,  intimating  half  seriously, 
that  it  might  possibly  take  place  without  it.  My  father,  who  had  by  this 
time  returned  and  found  both  letters  awaiting  him,  wrote  that  he 
would  not  put  him  to  the  test,  but  would  give  his  consent*  As  I  have 


*Mrs.  Bland  (Miss  Virginia  Elizabeth  Mitchell,  when  Mr.  Bland  met  her  in  1873)  is  the  daughter  of 
General  E.  Y.  Mitchell  of  Rolla,  Mo.  On  November  4,  1873,  Mr.  Bland  wrote  to  her  from  Lebanon  as 
follows: 

"I  was  at  Springfield  and  saw  your  father.    We  had  a  long  talk.     He  will  offer  no  objections  to  our 


AN  AMERICAN  COMMONER.  279 

said  Mr.  Bland  was  thirty-seven  years  old  at  the  time  and  perhaps  his 
friends  thought  him  older.  At  any  rate  he  had  a  good  deal  of  trouble 
in  convincing  them  that  he  intended  to  marry.  His  own  brother  would 
not  believe  him  at  first.  When  we  were  married  by  Rev.  Dr.  McAnally, 
Mr.  Bland  wore  a  dress  coat.  I  think  his  "best  man,"  Mr.  Estell 
McHenry,  was  responsible  for  it,  as  Mr.  Bland  himself  had  no  special 
fondness  for  them  and  they  were  seldom  worn  in  rural  Missouri  towns  of 
that  time. 

I  ought  to  mention  here  that  Mr.  Bland  had  had  his  romance  before 
ho  met  me — when  he  was  nineteen  years  old,  and  when  I  had  just  begun  my 
existence  in  this  world.  He  was  in  love  with  a  Miss  Moore  and  she  with 
him,  but  as  she  had  a  suitor  who  was  well-to-do  in  this  world's  goods,  her 
parents  wanted  her  to  marry  this  man.  They  had  no  objections  to  Mr. 
Bland  except  that  he  was  poor.  He  started  for  the  far  west  with  his  uncle 
and  aunt,  Mr.  and  Mrs.  Fulton,  asking  the  young  lady  to  write  to  him. 
He  never  received  a  letter  from  her.  He  told  me  he  believed  her  parents 
intercepted  her  letters  to  him.  She  married  a  year  later  and  died  within  a 
year  after  her  marriage.  His  love  for  her  was  very  great.  She  used  to 
wear  a  calico  dress,  white  apron  and  white  sun-bonnet,  and  he  always 
liked  to  see  a  woman  dressed  thus,  saying  they  looked  prettier  so  than  in 
any  other  dress. 

I  copy  here  a  letter  written  by  Mr.  Bland  to  me  October  27,  18^3,  from 
Lebanon,  Mo. : 

marriage.  I  am  indeed  glad  of  it.  I  have  seldom  seen  a  fortunate  marriage,  where  parents  objected. 
They  seem  to  have  a  keen  perception  on  such  points.  I  do  not  say  this  because  of  the  good  luck  in  our 
case.  I  think  I  told  you  as  much  before  we  knew  how  the  matter  would  end." 

In  a  letter  of  October  30,  1873,  he  wrote  as  follows,  enclosing  a  letter  from  General  Mitchell,  con 
senting  to  the  marriage: 

"I  feel  proud  of  the  compliments  he  pays  me  and  I  will  try  to  prove  them  well  founded.  He  says  my 
letter  to  him  contained  "a  covert  threat"  and  that  he  admired  my  courage,  etc.  What  I  said  was  that 
we  had  made  up  our  minds  to  marry  and  that  I  thought  nothing  but  death  could  keep  us  apart  or  prevent 
us  from  carrying  out  our  engagement— so  I  hoped  he  would  make  no  useless  objection.  It  was  in  the 

nature  of  a  threat  probably but  he  says  he  will  not  put  our  courage  to  the  test.  I  never  thought 

he  would  make  any  serious  objection  but  I  did  not  know  what  he  might  do.  I  am  so  glad  be  has  given 
his  consent  with  so  much  grace  and  willingness." 

This,  then,  is  the  whole  history  of  the  "elopement." 


280  AN  AMERICAN  COMMONER. 

"I  am  no  believer  in  the  idea  that  a  man  or  woman  nevec,  love  but 
once,"  he  wrote  "for  I  once  loved  a  girl  so  well  that  I  thought  I  would 
never  love  another,  and  I  suppose  my  remaining  single  has  to  some  extent 
proved  that  theory,  but  it  is  all  exploded  now." 

We  were  married  the  seventeenth  of  the  December  following  our  first 
meeting  in  June.  The  wedding  was  at  the  residence  of  Judge  John  L. 
Thomas,  my  uncle  at  Hillsboro,  and  two  weeks  later  we  went  to  Washing 
ton,  where  Mr.  Bland  was  serving  his  first  term  in  Congress.  We  boarded 
for  about  six  months,  and  during  that  time  I  met  Mr.  Dawes  of  Mas 
sachusetts,  Hon.  Fernando  Wood,  of  New  York,  Mr.  Elaine,  Attorney- 
General  Williams,  Secretary  Belknap  and  many  other  well-known  people — 
including  even  the  famous  "Boss"  Shepherd  himself.  Of  course  these 
were  only  incidental  acquaintances.  The  Missouri  friends  with  whom  I 
was  thrown  most  at  this  time,  were  Hon.  Erastus  Wells,  General  John 
B.  Clark,  Hon.  Thomas  T.  Crittenden,  Hon.  William  E.  Stone,  of  St. 
Louis,  James  B.  Eads  and  their  families. 

At  the  time  I  reached  Washington,  sectional  feeling  ran  high.  "Force 
Bills"  and  measures  of  the  same  kind,  were  being  agitated  in  Congress  and 
the  discussion  grew  so  heated  at  our  boarding  house  that  Mr.  Bland  finally 
changed  it  on  my  account. 

One  of  the  ladies  at  the  dinner  table  said  to  another:  "Why  didn't 
your  husband  send  you  a  piano  from  the  south  as  mine  did  me?"  They 
were  wives  of  members  of  Congress  and  as  they  called  the  people  of  the 
south  "rebels"  and  "traitors,"  I  was  somewhat  disturbed  by  it,  and  we 
went  to  a  place  where  there  was  less  of  that  kind  of  political  discussion. 

I  spent  the  next  winter  in  Missouri,  but  during  our  whole  married 
life  I  did  not  miss  more  than  four  winters  from  Washington,  and  during 
that  time  Mr.  Bland  wrote  to  me  daily. 

Mr  Bland  and  I  lived  together  twenty-five  years  and  six  months  from 
the  time  of  our  marriage  at  Hillsboro  to  his  death  at  Lebanon,  June  15, 
1899.  No  man  was  ever  fonder  of  his  home  and  family  than  he  was.* 

*The  children  born  to  us  were:    Virgie,  born  January  18, 1875,  in  Caledonia,  Mo.,  died  April  3, 1876; 


AN  AMERICAN  COMMONER. 


28l 


He  loved  children  dearly.  Often  when  going  to  and  from  the  House  in 
Washington  he  could  be  seen  playing  with  the  children  on  the  way,  turning 
the  rope  for  them  or  pulling  the  girls'  hair  and  teasing  them. 

One  day  while  we  were  living  in  Washington,  a  friend  called  and 
said :  **!  saw  Mr.  Bland  on  the  avenue  with  the  children."  I  said,  "No, 
not  our  children ;  they  are  here  at  home."  "I  saw  him  running  in  and  out 
of  Gaits'  jewelry  store  after  some  children  or  other,"  she  replied. 

At  another  time  he  was  on  a  street  car  and  took  a  little  girl  about  two 
years  old  on  his  lap.  After  a  time  she  went  to  sleep.  The  mother  sat 
bolt  upright  and  you  would  never  have  imagined  the  child  was  hers.  When 
Mr.  Bland  reached  Q  street  he  rose  and  put  the  little  one  on  the  mother's 
lap,  saying :  "Madam,  here  is  your  baby,  I  must  get  off  here."  The  chil 
dren  in  our  block  used  to  throw  sand  and  dirt  all  over  him  to  see  him  jump 
and  run.  Before  he  was  married  and  when  court  was  in  session  he  said 
his  favorites  among  the  children  of  Lebanon — about  half  a  dozen  in  num 
ber — would  follow  him  around,  and  lawyers  from  a  distance  would  say: 
"Bland,  are  these  your  children?"  He  would  give  the  children  nickels 
and  "match"  with  them.  So  one  day,  Charlie  Taliaferro,  a  small  friend  of 
his  wanted  to  match  nickles  with  him  in  church. 

The  Indian  war  dance  he  learned  in  the  far  west  was  a  favorite  pas 
time  with  the  children.  In  the  evening  after  dinner  Mr.  Bland  would 
stamp  and  sing  a  kind  of  war  whoop  and  the  children  would  dance  or 
jump  as  he  sang.  He  used  to  say  that  when  we  were  in  rented  rooms  he 
could  not  have  the  Indian  dance  as  people  would  think  we  were  crazy. 


Fanny,  born  June  4,  1876,  in  Washington;  Theo,  born  November  25,  1877,  in  Lebanon;  Ewing  Charles 
born  May  17, 1882,  in  Washington;  George  Vest,  born  February  10,  1884,  in  Washington;  Hattie,  born 
November  5, 1885,  in  Lebanon,  died  March  3,  1887;  Margaret  Nail,  born  December  1,  1887,  in  Wash 
ington,  died  September  11,  1892;  John  Lilburn,  born  July  28,  1889;  Virginia  M.,  born  in  Washington 
December  19, 1892. 

The  following  from  a  letter  written  by  Mr.  Bland  from  Washington,  December  5,  1894,  is  charac 
teristic  in  its  suggestion  of  his  tender  feelings  for  children. 

"I  opened  my  box  and  found  in  it  three  baby  shoes.  Now  did  you  put  them  in  the  box  to  remind 
me  of  the  baby,  or  did  the  baby  or  John  store  them  away?  I  have  them  put  up  on  the  mantle  and  they 
look  quite  home  like.  In  fact  they  are  better  company  than  a  picture  would  for  they  remind  me  of  the 
realities  of  the  baby's  life." 


282  AN  AMERICAN  COMMONER. 

We  had  rented  houses  for  about  ten  years  and  he  got  so  he  would  not  board 
or  live  in  rented  rooms.  We  lived  in  some  very  stuffy,  small  houses,  as  rents 
were  very  high  in  Washington.  He  used  to  get  out  and  run  races  with  the 
children  and  he  was  never  happier  than  when  he  was  on  the  floor  with 
three  or  four  children  climbing  over  him  and  wrestling  with  him.  He 
would  get  one  under  each  arm  and  with  the  rest  pounding  him  and 
trying  to  get  the  others  loose  and  they  would  keep  such  a  din  that  I  would 
have  to  get  out  and  leave  them  to  themselves.  He  was  gentle,  kind 
and  affectionate  as  any  woman  and  his  love  for  home  was  so  great  that  he 
hardly  went  into  town  except  to  get  the  mail  or  attend  to  some  pressing 
business  and  then  he  always  hurried  home  again.  I  used  to  think  the  last 
few  years  of  his  life  that  he  did  not  know  the  people  of^  our  own  county  as 
he  ought  to  have  done  as  a  public  man,  but  at  home  he  was  at  perfect 
liberty.  He  could  do  as  he  pleased  and  take  his  ease.  He  had  his  own 
favorite  chairs  and  corners  and  everybody  got  up  and  gave  these  to  him 
when  he  appeared.  In  summer  he  loved  to  sit  under  the  shade  of  the 
trees  in  a  big  chair  without  collar,  tie  or  coat  and  even  with  his  vest 
unbuttoned. 

He  was  fond  of  chewing  tobacco  but  I  never  heard  him  swear  or  use 
bad  language  and  I  never  saw  him  intoxicated  in  all  my  life.  He  could 
never  bear  to  hear  one  call  another  a  liar.  He  rarely  ever  punished  a 
child,  but  would  do  so  quickly  for  this.  He  said  that  when  a  younger  man 
he  had  to  be  restrained,  in  court,  from  taking  a  chair  to  or  throwing  a  law 
book  at  a  fellow  lawyer  who  questioned  his  veracity  and  that  he  felt  like 
killing  anyone  who  called  him  -a  liar.  Some  said  this  was  "Kentucky 
blood." 

He  used  to  have  a  time  with  the  boys  getting  them  to  work  when  they 
were  small.  He  would  get  a  hoe  and  take  them  to  the  garden.  For  a 
while  you  could  see  the  hoes  going  up  and  down  very  briskly,  his  with  the 
boys',  but  as  soon  as  he  left  to  go  to  town  for  his  mail,  they  would  be  gone 
and  in  ten  minutes  they  would  be  out  of  hearing  even.  When  he  would 


AN  AMERICAN  COMMONER.  283 

return  he  would  ask  where  they  were  and  say:  "The  little  rascals;  I 
can't  get  a  bit  of  work  out  of  them !  But  that  reminds  me  of  Charlie  and 
myself  running  away  to  the  creek  and  floating  logs  all  day,  where  we  could 
not  hear  our  mother  calling  us." 

At  other  times  he  would  run  foot  races  with  them,  and  the  children 
considered  him  a  boy  with  them.  They  would  often  say  things  to  him 
that  I  thought  they  should  not  have  said  and  I  would  correct  them  for  it. 
I  had  been  taught  that  children  should  respect  their  parents  and  older 
people  but  he  was  their  companion  and  the  children  when  nearly  grown, 
would  hang  around  him  and  sit  on  his  knee.  When  he  spoke  decidedly 
to  them,  however,  they  obeyed,  and  when  he  had  writing  or  other  business 
to  attend  to,  he  would  go  into  his  office  and  no  one  dared  to  interrupt  him — 
except  the  babies  who  would  slip  in  occasionally.  He  did  very  little  work 
on  the  farm,  but  would  sometimes  drive  the  wagon  in  haying  time.  He 
always  tried  to  keep  the  boys  at  work,  at  least  part  of  the  time  and  they 
always  helped  in  haying  time.  Often  with  the  help  of  the  hired  man  they 
put  up  the  entire  crop  of  hay. 

His  last  day  and  night  in  Congress  showed  how  conscientious  he  was. 
He  sat  up  that  last  night  all  night  to  watch  the  appropriations  for  the  dis 
trict,  coming  home  in  a  drizzling  rain  at  five  o'clock  in  the  morning  and 
returning  for  the  adjournment  at  12  o'clock  next  day.  He  took  cold  and 
his  throat  was  affected  again.  He  was  again  threatened  with  tonsilitis, 
but  on  returning  home  in  March  lie  seemed  fairly  well  for  two  weeks. 
His  throat  still  troubled  him  and  he  worried  much  over  my  sickness,  for  I 
had  been  sick  in  Washington  for  six  weeks,  and  after  returning  home  had 
relapsed.  He  was  much  worried  and  one  day  while  writing  he  was  over 
come  with  what  he  called  "a  dizzy  spell" 'and  was  unable  to  speak.  They 
kept  it  from  me  for  a  week,  but  on  the  first  day  I  sat  up  Mr.  Bland  was 
talking  to  me  when  he  took  one  of  those  spells  and  I  knew  then  that  he 
would  never  get  over  this  and  that  these  spells  would  prove  fatal.  They 
continued  for  three  months  growing  worse  and  worse.  He  grew  weaker 


284  AN  AMERICAN  COMMONER. 

and  weaker.  We  begged  him  to  go  to  St.  Louis,  but  he  would  not  leave 
our  country  home.  He  would  not  consent  to  have  Dr.  Gregory  from  St. 
Louis,  saying:  "If  this  is  anything  serious  no  one  can  help  me.  If  not 
Dr.  McCombs  will  bring  me  out."  Finally  without  getting  his  consent,  I 
sent  for  Dr.  Gregory  but  the  doctors  were  unable  to  stay  the  disease.  That 
he  knew  he  was  going  to  die  is  certain  for  in  November  he  made  his  will, 
saying  to  Judge  Holt :  "Holt,  I  am  not  going  to  live  long  and  I  want  to 
make  my  will.  I  may  live  for  some  time  or  I  may  go  at  any  time  and  I 
want  to  settle  up  my  affairs.  I  do  not  want  you  to  mention  this,  for  my 
political  enemies  would  use  it  against  me." 

When  he  was  ill  in  the  spring,  Judge  Holt  came  out  to  see  him  and 
when  done  with  him,  said :  "Well,  Bland,  let's  us  old  fellows  go  fishing. 
Set  a  time  now."  He  said  Mr.  Bland  looked  at  him,  shook  his  head  and 
said :  "Holt,  do  you  remember  what  I  told  you  last  fall  ?" 

Mr.  Bland  seemed  to  sleep  so  much  better  all  the  winter  of  1898-99  that 
we  congratulated  ourselves  that  he  was  growing  stronger  on  this  account, 
but  it  must  have  been  the  beginning  of  the  end,  for  he  died  in  one  of  those 
deep  sleeps.  He  had  several  of  those  spells  in  which  he  grew  cold  and 
stiff — one  very  severe  one  on  the  Saturday  before  his  death. 

There  was  something  he  tried  to  tell  us  for  some  days  before 
the  end,  but  he  could  not  speak  without  great  effort  and  the 
doctors  said  we  must  not  question  him  or  talk  to  him — that 
no  new  faces  must  come  near  and  that  no  one  could  imagine  how 
much  of  an  effort  it  was  for  him  to  recognize  even  those  whom  he  had 
been  used  to  seeing.  About  a  week  before  he  died  we  took  Major 
Towles  to  see  him.  They  had  been  long  and  good  friends.  When 
the  major  had  gone  in  Mr.  Bland  put  his  hand  over  his  eyes  and  looked  at 
him  earnestly  for  a  moment  then  held  out  his  hand  and  taking  the  major's 
held  it  very  tightly  and  tried  to  speak  but  the  major  urged  him  not  to  do 
so.  When  the  major  came  out  his  voice  trembled  as  he  said :  "He  knew 
me,  he  knew  me." 


AN  AMERICAN  COMMONER.  285 

On  the  Tuesday  night  before  his  death  (Thursday)  he  whispered 
something  and  only  the  baby  could  understand  him.  She  said :  "He  says 
'George  and  John !'  "  When  John  came  (he  is  ten  years  old),  his  father  took 
his  two  hands  in  his,  looked  at  him  long  and  tenderly  and  finally  shook  both 
his  hands.  On  this  same  day  he  shook  hands  with  many  of  us  near  him  and 
I  now  know  he  was  telling  us  good-bye.  He  would  take  our  hands  and  hold 
them  so  tight  we  could  not  get  loose  without  great  trouble.  On  Tuesday 
night  about  7  o'clock  he  whispered  the  baby's  pet  name.  She  was  on  the  bed 
by  him  and  this  was  his  last  word.  He  afterward  looked  anxiously  and 
affectionately  at  us  both.  I  had  little  Virginia  in  my  lap.  He  could  not 
speak  and  he  then  went  into  a  deep  sleep  and  never  awakened.  I  hoped 
so  he  would  and  stayed  by  him  almost  constantly,  hoping.  He  had  asked 
me  a  week  before  not  to  leave  him.  About  half  past  10  o'clock  Wednesday 
night  I  lay  down  and  got  up  again  at  twelve.  I  found  his  feet  cold  and 
immediately  began  to  rub  him  and  apply  bottles  of  warm  water.  I  sat  by 
his  bed  all  night  and  rubbed  his  limbs  and  arms. 

About  2  o'clock,  I  think  it  was,  his  brother  came  in  and 
one  by  one  the  household  gathered.  About  half  past  2  o'clock  his  pulse 
went  up  to  150  and  the  friend  who  was  with  us  helping  to  nurse  (and  she 
herself  was  a  physician),  advised  us  to  send  for  the  family  physician.  He 
arrived  about  half  past  3  o'clock  and  when  he  took  Mr.  Eland's  hand  he 
looked  at  me  quickly,  dropping  his  eyes.  Then  he  looked  in  his  face  and 
said  in  a  startled  tone :  "Mrs.  Bland,  I  do  not  like  his  symptoms."  He 
endeavored  to  give  him  medical  aid  without  avail.  All  of  us  were  at  his 
side.  The  end  was  fast  approaching.  I  and  my  daughter  left  the  room. 
We  could  not  stand  to  see  him  go.  In  a  few  minutes  he  was  dead. 


CHAPTER  XXXIII 

MRS.  ELAND'S  REMINISCENCES.— II. 

Mr.  Eland's  First  Speech  in  Congress  and  the  Piute  War. — He  Favors  Impeaching 
Grant.— Disappointed  at  Cleveland's  Defeat  in  1888.— Crisp's  Defection  From 
Bimetallism.— "Those  Whom  They  Can't  Bribe  They  Get  Drunk."— Mills  Begs 
Support  and  Sheds  Tears. — Cleveland's  Second  Administration. — Alarm  Over 
the  Coxey  Army. — Closets  Filled  With  Loaded  Rifles. — Clubs  and  Government 
Grass. — Mr.  Eland's  Indignation. — Mr.  Eland's  Lecture  Tour  in  the  West. — His 
Acquaintance  With  Mark  Twain.— The  Chicago  Convention.— What  He  Said 
During  its  Progress.— His  Trip  to  the  East  and  His  Visit  to  Mr.  McKinley.— His 
Logical  Mind  and  His  Faculty  of  Foresight. 

| HE  first  time  I  remember  hearing  Mr.  Bland  address  the 
House  was  when  a  proposed  appropriation  was  up  in  the 
House  to  pay  the  state  of  Nevada  for  the  expenses  of  an 
Indian  war  and  the  validity  of  the  claim  was  being  ques 
tioned.  This  was  during  our  first  year  in  Washington.  Mr.  Bland  had 
taken  part  in  the  Indian  war,  having  volunteered  with  other  citizens  of 
Virginia  City  to  follow  up  the  Indians  and  drive  them  off.  This  they  did, 
driving  them  beyond  Pyramid  Lake.  Mr.  Bland  told  me  that  parts  of  the 
dismembered  bodies  were  found  scattered  all  the  way  to  Pyramid  Lake 
over  about  one  hundred  miles  of  the  trail.  Mr.  Bland  said  the  Piute 
Indians  were  hard  to  fight,  as  they  got  behind  trees.  He  told  me  that  he 
shot  one  Indian  and  saw  him  fall.  So  he  spoke  for  a  few  minutes  in  favor 
of  the  bill  saying  he  knew  it  was  a  just  claim. 


When  the  contest  between  Tilden  and  Hayes  was  pending,  Washing 
ton  was  filled  with  troops,  and  our  old  colored  nurse  said  it  put  her  in  mind 
of  war  times.  On  the  street  corners  everywhere  could  be  seen  squads  of 

soldiers.     Mr.  Bland  was  much  opposed  to  this  action  of  President  Grant 

286 


AN  AMERICAN  COMMONER.  287 

and  was  at  this  time  in  favor  of  getting  up  articles  of  impeachment  against 
him. 


I  well  remember  the  morning  on  which  it  was  thought  that  Cleveland 
was  elected  the  first  time.  We  went  into  town  from  Lebanon  and  an  old 
man  about  eighty  years  old,  a  Mr.  Evans,  came  up  and  said  to  Mr.  Bland : 
"Well,  Dick,  what  do  you  think  of  the  outlook?"  "Well,  Uncle  Billy," 
Mr.  Bland  replied,  "we  have  been  in  the  woods  a  long  time,  but  I  believe 
we  are  going  to  come  out.  I  think  Mr.  Cleveland  is  elected." 

During  this  time  while  the  truth  was  still  in  doubt,  a  certain  democrat 
of  our  town,  who  was  very  enthusiastic,  said  to  Mr.  Bland :  "Bland,  I  don't 
believe  you  are  a  good  democrat;  you  don't  seem  to  believe  Cleveland  is 
elected."  "I  am  a  good  enough  democrat  to  vote  the  straight  ticket  and 
not  to  scratch,"  Mr.  Bland  replied.  He  knew  that  this  acquaintance  had 
"scratched"  during  the  preceding  election. 


It  was  quite  a  disappointment  to  Mr.  Bland  when  Mr.  Cleveland  was 
defeated  for  election  in  1888  though  he  had  hardly  wanted  him  nominated. 
He  said  that  just  at  that  time  when  the  treasury  was  in  good  condition, 
with'  a  surplus  on  hand,  Cleveland's  election  would  have  been  a  better 
thing  for  his  party  than  his  last  election  with  the  treasury  empty.  When 
the  news  of  his  defeat  was  confirmed  we  were  sitting  in  the  dining  room, 
looking  very  blue  and  Mr.  Bland  looking  as  if  he  had  lost  a  friend.  The 
children  would  persist  in  singing  the  campaign  songs,  which  they  had  just 
begun  to  know  very  well.  They  would  sing:  "Vote  for  Grover  Cleve 
land  early  in  the  morning."  Mr.  Bland  would  say  to  them :  "Go  in  the 
kitchen/'  or  "go  out  of  doors." 

During  the  campaign  in  which  William  R.  Morrison  was  defeated,  a 


288  AN  AMERICAN  COMMONER. 

strong  fight  was  made  on  several  old  members,  Mr.  Bland  among  the  rest. 
Mr.  Simmons  (of  Simmons  Hardware  Co.),  sent  Mr.  Bland  a  check 
saying  he  understood  a  fight  was  being  made  upon  him  (Mr.  Bland)  and 
he  feared  he  would  be  defeated.  Mr.  Bland  thanked  him  heartily  and 
returned  the  money,  saying:  "If  I  know  my  people,  and  I  think  I  do, 
I  will  not  need  it."  There  was  a  strong  fight  made  against  him,  papers 
springing  up  like  mushrooms  over  the  district  and  nobody  seeming  to  know 
where  the  money  came  from  to  start  such  papers. 

The  year  Sergeant-at-Arms  Silcott  ran  away  with  the  money  in  the 
treasury  of  the  House  of  Representatives,  Mr.  Bland  refused  to  accept  part 
of  that  month's  salary.  It  was  found  that  Silcott  had  left  enough  in 
the  treasury  to  pay  $60  to  each  member  instead  of  $416.  Mr.  Bland 
would  only  accept  that  much,  and  I  now  have  in  my  possession,  I  think, 
the  receipt  for  the  rest  of  the  $416,  from  the  officer  who  succeeded  Silcott. 
He  (Mr.  Bland)  said  that  he  and  the  other  older  members  were  responsible 
for  the  loose  manner  in  which  the  office  of  sergeant-at-arms  was  kept  and 
that  they  ought  to  have  to  suffer  for  it,  but  that  the  younger  members  ought 
to  accept  their  full  salary. 

At  12  o'clock  on  the  night  of  March  26,  1892,  I  was  in  the  gallery 
of  the  House  when  the  votes  were  being  taken  on  cloture.  Mr.  Bland 
stood  near  Mr.  Gate,  of  Arkansas,  a  member  of  the  banks  and  banking 
committee,  who  shortly  afterwards  went  over  to  the  gold  forces.  Mr.  Gate 
said  to  Mr.  Bland :  "Bland,  they  are  standing  by  us  nobly." 

"Yes,  those  who  are  able  to  stand,"  Mr.  Bland  replied  after  Mr.  Gate 
went  down.  I  asked  Mr.  Bland  what  he  meant.  "Why,"  he  said,  "those 
whom  they  can't  bribe  they  get  drunk  and  eight  of  our  men  are  too  drunk 
to  vote." 

Mr.  Bland  went  to  Crisp  that  night  about  the  time  of  the  tie  vote,  and 


MR.  BLAND  AT  THIRTY-EIGHT. 
(From  a  Photograph  in  Mrs.  Bland's  Possession.) 


AN  AMERICAN  COMMONER.  ^09 

said  to  him  that  he  was  willing  and  ready  to  keep  his  forces  there  all  night 
if  necessary  or  as  long  as  it  was  necessary  and  Crisp  told  him  to  move  to 
adjourn  and  he  would  see  that  a  cloture  rule  was  brought  in. 

The  first  that  Mr.  Bland  knew  of  Mr.  Crisp's  backing  out,  was  when  a 
New  York  correspondent  came  to  him  and  told  him.  He  got  about  a  dozen 
of  the  members  oldest  in  point  of  service  and  took  them  to  the  speaker's 
room.  Confronting  him  Mr.  Bland  asked  if  he  did  not  promise  that  night 
to  see  that  the  cloture  rule  was  brought  in  and  that  when  he  (Mr.  B.)  went 
to  him  he  wrote  the  rule  with  his  own  hand 

When  Mr.  Crisp  was  running  for  senator  from  his  state,  they  wrote 
to  Mr.  Bland  asking  him  if  Mr.  Crisp  had  been  true  to  bimetallism.  Mr. 
Bland  wrote  that  it  was  a  matter  in  which  he  did  not  wish  to  interfere  and 
told  them  to  look  to  the  history  of  that  time. 

I  was  in  the  congressional  library  in  the  capitol,  reading  on  Monday, 
putting  in  the  time  while  waiting  for  the  bill  to  come  up.  Mr.  Bland  came 
in  to  find  me  and  I  knew  when  I  looked  up  at  him  that  something  had 
happened,  he  looked  so  utterly  miserable.  I  said :  "What  is  the  matter  ?" 
He  spoke  in  an  undertone  for  others  were  near  and  said :  "Well,  we  are 
sold  out  again ;  Crisp  has  gone  over  to  the  enemy."  Mr.  Bland  was  very 
angry. 


I  am  sure  that  it  was  about  this  time  or  on  Sunday  preceding  the  Mon 
day  of  the  refusal  of  Speaker  Crisp  to  bring  in  the  cloture  rule,  that  three 
free  silver  democrats  called  on  Mr.  Bland  and  told  him  that  they  under 
stood  Mr.  Catchings  had  gone  to  New  York  to  consult  with  Wall  street  and 
that  he  and  Crisp  were  going  to  back  down.  Mr.  Bland  told  me,  after  they 
left,  of  their  conversation,  saying  he  thought  there  was  nothing  in  it.  Mr. 
Catchings  afterward  went  over  boldly.  Clifton  Breckenridge  and  he  were 
defeated  for  it. 


290  AN  AMERICAN  COMMONER. 

When  the  speakership  contest  was  in  progress  between  Messrs.  Mills 
and  Crisp,  Mr.  Bland  was  greatly  worried  and  he  afterwards  told  me  all 
about  it.  He  had  written  to  Mr.  Mills  after  his  speech  in  Indiana  that  fall 
and  asked  him  if  he  really  meant  what  he  had  said  in  that  speech.  Mr. 
Bland  was  much  disturbed  over  it  and  when  he  read  it  in  the  paper  he  said : 
"If  Mills  said  what  this  paper  says  he  did,  he  has  deserted  us."  He  looked 
as  if  some  member  of  the  family  had  recently  died  and  immediately 
wrote  to  Mr.  Mills  and  Mr.  Mills  in  reply  acknowledged  the  speech.  When 
Mr.  Bland  got  to  Washington  he  had  not  made  up  his  mind  what  to  do  and 
the  contest  became  very  heated  and  for  three  days  and  nights  the  news 
paper  men  and  friends  of  Mills  haunted  his  footsteps.  In  the  meantime 
Mr.  Mills  had  sent  for  Mr.  Bland  and  told  him  he  would  not  organize  the 
House  or  the  committee  on  coinage,  weights  and  measures  against  silver. 
Several  persons  had  come  to  Mr.  Bland  and  informed  him  that  Senator 
Hill  of  New  York  was  backing  Crisp.  He  said  he  knew  what  that  meant ; 
that  he  was  afraid  to  support  Crisp,  and  that  he  had  known  Mills  a  long 
time  and  had  his  assurance  that  he  would  not  organize  against  silver. 
Finally,  going  to  Mills'  room  and  finding  it  full  of  people  he  said :  "Gentle 
men,  I  wish  to  speak  to  Mr.  Mills  alone,"  and  when  they  went  out  he  said 
to  Mills:  "Well,  Mr.  Mills,  we  have  known  each  other  a  long  time 
and  have  been  friends  a  long  time ;  I  have  come  to  tell  you  I  am  going  to 
vote  for  you."  Mr.  Bland  said :  "We  shook  hands  and  Mills  shed  tears 
and  I  did  too."  But  it  was  late ;  the  silver  men  had  become  scattered  and 
could  not  be  gotten  together.  So  Crisp  was  elected. 


During  the  year  of  the  repeal  of  the  Sherman  act,  at  the  close  of  the 
extra  session,  a  motion  was  made  to  vote  extra  mileage.  Mr.  Bland 
took  the  floor  and  said  he  was  opposed  to  democratic  members  going  on 
record  as  voting  and  accepting  extra  mileage  and  that  he,  for  one,  would 
not  accept  it.  The  motion  carried  and  Mr.  Bland  would  not  accept  this 


AN  AMERICAN  COMMONER.  291 

mileage  although  urged  by  myself  and  our  daughter  to  do  so.  There  was 
a  question  as  to  whether  we  could  keep  her  in  school  longer.  Our  expenses 
being  heavy  and  the  fear  of  the  defeat  which  followed  overshadowed  us 
all.  He  steadily  refused  and  on  our  daughter's  insisting  and  saying :  "Oh, 
papa,  take  it,  it  would  be  enough  to  finish  me  at  school,"  he  spoke  very 
slowly  and  said:  "Would  you  have  me  do  a  thing  that  I  do  not 
consider  honorable?"  I  well  remember  that  one  member  from  the  Far 
West,  who  was  a  near  neighbor  of  ours,  accepted  the  extra 
mileage  of  about  $2,000  and  never  left  the  city.  There  was  only  about 
six  weeks  between  this  session  and  the  regular  session  and  but  few  mem 
bers  really  went  home. 


In  the  spring  of  1894,  I  think  it  was,  when  some  silver  measure  was 
up  and  there  was  such  a  large  democratic  majority  in  the  House,  and  mem 
bers  seemed  indifferent  and  a  full  attendance  could  not  be  obtained,  a  reso 
lution  was  introduced  to  dock  each  man  his  salary  during  the  time  he  so 
absented  himself  (this  was  the  spring  of  the  Kansas  City  convention), 
but  it  seems  this  did  not  succeed  since  members  behaved  in  bad  faith  and 
did  accept  their  pay.  A  this  time  the  New  York  and  New  England  demo 
crats  walked  out  of  the  democratic  caucus.  Mr.  Reed  of  Maine,  and  Mr. 
Tracy  were  working  together  and  it  was  then  that  Pence  made  his  speech 
saying  "it  is  Tommy  on  this  side  and  Tommy  on  that" — meaning  Mr.  Reed 
and  Mr.  Tracy.  Mr.  Bland  had  charge  of  the  time  and  after  spending 
several  days  and  accomplishing  nothing  and  becoming  exasperated,  he  re 
fused  to  allow  them  to  adjourn  for  Washington's  birthday,  saying  that 
"if  they  would  not  work,  they  must  not  play."  Finally,  several  members, 
among  the  number  General  Sickles  and  some  other  New  Yorker,  were  sum 
moned  before  the  bar  of  the  House  to  be  censured.  They  refused  to  come. 
Mr.  Bland  made  a  speech,  in  which,  he  called  attention  to  all  these  facts 
and  the  fact  that  members  would  not  vote.  In  concluding  he  said:  "I 


292  AN  AMERICAN  COMMONER. 

£all  the  attention  of  the  people  of  this  country  to  the  state  of  things  exist 
ing  here.  Gentlemen  are  summoned  before  the  bar  of  this  House  and  re 
fuse  to  come.  I  call  attention  to  the  fact  that  we  are  proceeding  against 
law  and  order  and  gentlemen  of  this  House  are  but  little  better  than  the 
anarchists  who  would  throw  a  bomb  from  this  gallery."  Mr.  Reed  was 
very  angry  and  said :  "Yes,  Bland  would  have  someone  throwing  a  bomb 
from  the  gallery  at  us."  But  after  that  they  voted,  for  they  saw  that  Mr. 
Bland  had  called  attention  to  their  being  the  cause  of  the  delay  in  business. 
He  became  so  worried  over  this  that  he  could  not  sleep  and  he  used  to  go  to 
the  House  quite  ill.  I  followed  him  there,  watching  from  the  gallery,  ex 
pecting  to  see  him  carried  out.  One  day  after  a  number  of  roll  calls,  in 
which  the  democrats  would  fail  to  answer  roll  call  and  come  in  from  the 
lobbies  just  too  late  to  vote,  Mr.  Bland  said:  "I  am  disgusted;  I  have  a 
mind  to  resign  and  go  home." 


During  the  conference  between  the  House  and  Senate  on  the  Sherman 
bill,  Mr.  Bland  was  a  member  of  that  committee.  In  discussing  that  part 
of  the  bill  referring  to  the  paying  out  of  silver  or  gold  on  demand,  he  said 
to  Senator  Stewart  that  that  part  of  the  bill  was  dangerous,  since  the  sec 
retary  of  the  treasury  would  always  construe  it  to  mean  gold.  Senator 
Stewart  thought  not.  Mr.  Bland  added  that  that  part  of  the  bill  was  put 
in  by  Mr.  Sherman.  He  knew,  he  said,  that  nothing  favoring  silver  would 
be  put  in  by  Sherman.  Senator  Stewart  afterwards  acknowledged  that 
Mr.  Bland  was  right,  as  the  clause  was  construed  to  mean  "gold." 


The  spring  Coxey  was  to  come  to  Washington,  the  people  of  that  city 
were  much  alarmed  and  even  the  officers  of  the  government  must  have  been 
frightened  for  a  friend  of  ours  who  was  employed  in  the  treasury  told  Mr. 
Bland  that  the  closets  in  that  building  had  been  stored  with  loaded  guns 


AN  AMERICAN  COMMONER.  293 

and  other  arms.  Mr.  Bland  said :  "What  in  the  world  are  people  afraid 
of?  These  men  are  a  crowd  of  poor,  poverty-stricken  fellows  who  would 
not  harm  anyone."  "Do  you  think  so,"  she  asked. 

"I  know  so,"  said  Mr.  Bland.  The  lobbies  here  are  filled  with  people 
when  a  public  measure  is  up  like  the  tariff  or  silver.  Why  not  be  afraid 
of  them  ?  They  are  well  dressed  and  can  go  all  over  the  capitol ;  but  when 
a  few  poverty-stricken  men  come  here  to  ask  relief  they  are  feared  and  a 
great  noise  is  made.  There  is  no  harm  in  them." 

Afterward,  this  friend  said  to  Mr.  Bland:  "You  were  right,  Mr. 
Bland,  I  feel  very  sorry  for  those  poor  men,  half-clad  and  so  miserable 
looking,  many  of  them  are  but  youths."  The  day  Coxey  had  set  to  make 
his  talk  on  the  steps  of  the  capitol,  all  Washington  was  out,  and  hundreds 
were  walking  and  running  on  the  grass  and  the  police  were  not  paying  the 
slightest  attention  to  them,  but  were  excitedly  talking  in  groups  about  what 
they  were  going  to  do  if  any  of  Coxey's  men  undertook  to  cross  the  grounds. 
We  were  standing  on  the  front  side  of  the  capitol.  Mr.  Bland  and  I  stood 
with  other  members  and  their  families  when  Carl  Brown  undertook  to 
cross  a  small  reservation  on  the  House  side  of  the  capitol,  and  the  police 
ran  at  him  striking  him  with  their  clubs.  You  could  distinctly  hear  the 
blows.  Mr.  Bland  said  "What  a  shame !  I  believe  they  are  killing  him !" 
When  the  case  came  up  in  court  Mr.  Bland  was  summoned  and  gave  his 
testimony  which  was  not  satisfactory.  He  was  not  questioned  at  length. 
He  said  afterwards  that  they  did  not  want  his  testimony. 


During  the  spring  of  1894,  several  hundred  workingmen  of  Ouray, 
Colorado,  each  subscribing  twenty-five  cents  had  a  set  of  souvenir  table 
spoons  made  with  Colorado  scenery  and  the  head  of  the)  Indian  chief 
Ouray,  on  them.  They  were  sent  to  Senators  Wolcott  and  Teller  to  pre 
sent  to  Mr.  Bland.  They  were  in  a  case  with  "R.  P.  Bland"  on  it  and  on 
the  inside  they  were  engraved  "To  the  Hon.  Richard  P.  Bland,  Champion 


294  AN  AMERICAN  COMMONER. 

of  the  People's  Money,  as  a  Slight  Token  of  Regard  from  the  People  of 
Ouray,  Col."  Mr.  Bland  would  not  receive  them,  saying  that  his  enemies 
were  only  watching  to  have  an  excuse  to  say  that  he  was  working  for  the 
mine  owners.  He  felt  badly  to  have  to  return  them,  saying  he  feared  the 
people  of  Ouray  would  think  that  he  suspected  them  wrongly;  that  they 
had  taken  of  their  small  earnings  to  send  the  present  and  he  regretted  he 
could  not  accept  it.  He  took  the  box  back  to  Senators  Wolcott  and  Teller. 
I  told  him  I  had  a  mind  to  slip  up  behind  him  and  take  them  from  him. 
Of  course  I  wanted  them,  but  no  amount  of  persuasion  could  change  him. 


Mr.  Bland,  after  his  defeat  for  Congress,  and  during  the  time  he  was 
out  of  office,  made  a  lecture  tour  of  Colorado.  He  was  greatly  aided  by 
Messrs.  Shafroth,  Bell,  Pence,  and  Frank  Trumbull.  He  would  never 
travel  on  a  pass  while  in  Congress,  as  he  said  he  wished  to  be  free  to  vote 
as  his  conscience  dictated.  But  while  on  this  trip  he  did  accept  passes  and 
traveled  through  Colorado  on  them.  He  made  or  cleared  about  $3,500  in 
lecturing  which  was  a  great  help  to  him  at  this  time.  At  Aspen  he  re 
ceived  his  largest  sum,  $7oo,  while  in  Denver  it  was  said  he  had  the  largest 
reception  ever  given  in  the  state1.  This  was  held  at  the  Brown  Palace 
Hotel,  one  of  the  finest  hotels  in  the  world,  and  for  about  two  hours  a  con 
stant  stream  of  people  passed  through  to  shake  hands  with  him.  Here 
he  was  presented  with  a  beautiful  silver  plate  by  the  Republican  Ladies 
League,  of  Denver,  by  whom  the  reception  was  given.  When  Mr.  Bland 
was  in  California  and  Nevada,  he  knew  Mark  Twain.  He  said  Mr. 
Clemens  was  never  happier  than  when  telling  stories  in  a  crowded  place. 
Once  when  Mr.  Bland  was  sick,  I  got  Mark  Twain's  book  on  "Roughing 
It,"  and  read  aloud  from  it.  Mr.  Bland  enjoyed  it  very  much.  When  I 
read  to  him  about  the  stage  robbers  he  said :  "Why  I  defended  that  man 
and  Mark  has  given  him  a  name.  His  real  name  was  Brown.  I  was  out 
there  so  much  earlier  than  Clemens,"  he  added,  "that  if  I  had  only  saved 


AN  AMERICAN  COMMONER.  295 

data  it  would  have  been  valuable  to  me."     He  also  knew  the  author  of 
"Flush  Times  in  Mississippi  and  Georgia,"  whom  he  first  met  in  the  west. 


Mr.  Bland  believed  Mr.  Cleveland  would  sign  the  seigniorage  bill  as 
it  was  not  an  extreme  measure.  The  night  after  it  was  vetoed  we  both 
felt  badly  over  it,  and  when  it  was  time  to  go  to  bed,  I  said :  "Mr.  Bland, 
I  hope  you  will  sleep  to-night  and  that  you  do  not  feel  worse  than  I  do." 
He  smiled  and  said  "he  hoped  not." 

During  the  time  the  seigniorage  bill  was  before  the  president  a  delega 
tion  of  men  from  New  York  were  in  Washington  to  lobby  on  the  tariff 
bill.  An  eastern  senator  told  Mr.  Bland  that  one  of  these  gentlemen 
had  informed  him  that  he  had  just  called  upon  the  president  and  that  in 
conversation  with  him,  he  had  said :  "Well,  Mr.  President,  of  course  you 
will  veto  the  seigniorage  bill !" 

The  president  answered :  "I  do  not  know  about  that.  I  have  had  no 
petitions  about  the  matter." 

The  gentleman  said  to  Mr.  Hill :  "He  will  have  plenty  of  petitions 
in  the  next  twenty-four  hours.  I  go  by  Baltimore  and  Philadelphia  to 
night  and  he  will  have  enough."  Mr.  Hill  said  to  Mr.  Bland  next  morn 
ing:  "Watch  and  see  the  petitions  and  telegrams  come  in."  They  did 
come  and  the  president  then  said  that  owing  to  the  poor  construction  of 
the  bill  and  the  petitions  and  telegrams  from  the  business  men  of  the 
country,  he  could  not  sign  it. 

When  the  seigniorage  bill  had  passed  both  houses  and  had  gone  to  the 
president  for  his  signature,  Mr.  Bland  called  upon  him  one  day  on  other 
business,  but  said  to  the  president:  "Mr.  President,  I  hope  you  will  not 
think  of  that  bill  of  mine  for  two  weeks."  Mr.  Bland  said  the  president  re- 


296  AN  AMERICAN  COMMONER. 

plied :     "Well,  Bland,  you  do  give  me  more  trouble  than  any  other  good 
man  in  the  country.* 


When,  in  1896,  they  were  urging  Mr.  Bland  to  go  to  Kentucky  and 
letters  were  being  received  by  him  signed  by  old  acquaintances  and  friends 
asking  him  to  come,  he  would  not  do  so,  saying  that  Senator  Blackburn 
was  a  presidential  candidate  and  that  if  he  went  to  Kentucky  it  might  ob 
scure  the  issue  of  16  to  I  coinage  and  cause  "a  contest  over  men." 


During  the  Chicago  convention,  the  reporters  in  Lebanon  wondered 
why  Mr.  Bland  would  not  go  into  the  "Bland  Headquarters"  in  town.  He 
did  so  for  a  single  day,  but  he  said  he  could  have  no  privacy  and  that  if  he 
dropped  a  word  it  was  misconstrued.  The  night  after  the  adoption  of  the 
Chicago  platform  when  the  reporters  came  out  about  half  past  ten  o'clock, 
he  was  somewhat  annoyed.  That  night  our  twelve-year-old  boy, 
Ewing,  who  had  worked  all  day  in  the  harvest  field,  went  in  with  my  father 
and  sat  up  until  news  of  adjournment  came.  Mr.  Bland  would  not  go  in 
but  said  to  me :  "Let  us  get  to  bed  early  for  we  may  be  awakened  in  the 
night  and  have  to  get  up,  for  I  believe  I  will  be  nominated  and  they  will 
come  out  here  in  numbers." 

That  night  about  eight  o'clock,  Dr.  McCombs  came  out.  Mr.  Bland 
had  sent  me  in  for  him  telling  me  not  to  go  directly  to  the  doctor's  office, 
but  to  walk  around  and  slip  up  to  the  office  and  tell  the  doctor  to  wait  until 
dark  and  come  out.  He  told  the  doctor  he  was  feeling  very  nervous  and 
wanted  something  to  "brace  him  up."  The  doctor  said,  "Do  you  think  you 
will  be  nominated,  Mr.  Bland?"  "Yes,  I  am  sure  of  it,"  Mr.  Bland  said. 
"I  do  not  want  it  but  it  seems  to  be  coming  my  way." 


*In  a  letter  of  1900  to  the  editor  of  this  work  Mr.  Cleveland  said  Mr.   Bland  troubled  him  so  little 
about  patronage  that  he  had  little  opportunity  to  become  well  acquainted  with  him. 


AN  AMERICAN  COMMONER.  297 

The  doctor  prescribed  for  him,  but  the  afternoon  Bryan  was  nominated 
Mr.  Bland  said :  "I  feel  better  than  I  have  for  three  months."  He  picked 
up  the  bottles  and  emptying  them  out  said :  "I  will  not  need  medicine  now 
and  to-night  I  shall  sleep  all  right." 


The  night  before  the  Chicago  balloting  we  were  talking  and  he  said : 
"Well,  if  I  am  nominated  I  shall  do  my  best  to  merit  it,  but  I  am  not  as 
strong  as  I  once  was  and  it  seems  strange  and  too  bad  that  during  all  these 
years  I  could  make  my  campaigns  and  get  through  all  right,  but  that  now 
when  I  could  accomplish  so  much  by  lecturing  and  make  a  competency  for 
myself  and  family  in  my  declining  years  I  have  not  the  strength  to  do  it." 
He  had  been  urged  to  lecture  and  had  been  offered  large  sums  to  do  so,  but 
he  said :  "If  I  go  I  will  have  to  neglect  my  own  people.  I  am  needed  here 
in  my  own  district  and  shall  stay." 

That  afternoon  when  he  returned  from  town  and  sat  in  the  yard  he 
and  my  father  were  talking  and  he  said  that  under  no  condition  would  he 
be  a  candidate  for  vice-president.  Later  on,  he  sent  two  messages  which 
my  father  says  he  read,  saying  not  to  let  his  name  go  up  for  vice-president. 


He  knew  nothing  about  their  balloting  for  him  for  vice-president  until 
the  third  ballot,  I  think  it  was,  when  they  brought  out  the  bulletin.  He 
was  very  much  disturbed.  Sitting  down  he  wrote  out  a  telegram  handing 
it  to  the  messenger  and  saying :  "Here,  Arthur,  get  on  your  horse  and  run 
him  to  town  or  they  will  nominate  me  on  the  next  ballot."  Turning  to  me 
his  eyes  flashed  and  he  said :  "I  would  not  have  the  nomination  if  they  gave 
it  to  me  sixteen  times  over.  If  they  wanted  me  on  that  ticket  why  didn't 
they  put  me  where  I  belonged." 


298  AN  AMERICAN  COMMONER. 

That  he  did  not  want  the  nomination  I  am  sure.  On  three  occasions, 
I  had  to  use  all  my  efforts  to  keep  him  from  making  a  public  statement  that 
he  would  not  be  a  candidate  and  I  know  if  he  had  not  feared  that  such  a 
statement  would  hurt  the  cause,  he  would  have  done  so.  He  said  to  me 
that  he  would  not  mind  losing  his  home  (about  all  we  had)  so  much  or  his 
life  for  his  counrty,  but  that  not  being  strong  he  might  hamper  his  party ; 
that  if  he  lost  a  night's  sleep  from  illness,  the  reporters  would  get  hold  of 
it  and  it  would  go  out  to  the  country  that  he  was  breaking  down,  etc. 


When  we  were  on  our  way  to  the  New  York  ratification  meeting,  we 
stopped  at  Alliance  to  wait  for  Mr.  Bryan.  The  committee  from  Pittsburg, 
who  came  to  our  hotel  in  Alliance,  took  us  up  to  Canton,  suggesting  that  we 
go  up  and  call  upon  Mr.  McKinley.  This  we  did.  He  seemed  very  glad 
to  see  Mr.  Bland  and  came  out  to  the  sidewalk  to  meet  us,  saying :  "Why, 
Bland,  did  you  not  let  me  know  you  were  here  ?  I  should  have  sent  down 
for  you."  After  the  address  of  the  committee,  he  asked  us  in  to  see  Mrs. 
McKinley  and  we  had  quite  a  conversation,  he  saying  to  Mrs.  McKinley : 
"My  dear,  this  is  Mr.  Bland  whom  Mr.  Bryan  defeated  for  the  democratic 
nomination  for  president."  Turning  to  Mr.  Bland  he  said :  "Bland,  you 
should  have  been  nominated ;  you  were  the  logical  candidate  and  the  strong 
est  man  your  party  had." 

"I  am  satisfied  if  my  party  is,"  replied  Mr.  Bland. 

Mr.  Bland  has  remarked  to  me  that  he  led  the  fight  against  Mr. 
McKinley's  famous  tariff  bill  and  that  often  he  (McKinley)  would  come  to 
him  and  say :  "Now,  Bland,  don't  make  a  fight  on  this  schedule." 


Mr.  Bland  was  very  quiet  and  rarely  expressed  his  feeling,  but  after 
Mr.  Holman  died  and  while  we  were  house  hunting,  a  certain  house  was 


AN  AMERICAN  COMMONER.  299 

spoken  of  for  rent.    "I  will  not  look  at  that  one,"  he  said ;  "  I  could  not  live 
there;  there  is  where  Holman  died." 

When  the  members  were  all  back  of  the  chairs  in  the  House  waiting 
to  draw  seats  in  December,  1897,  he  and  Mr.  Holman  were  standing  to 
gether.  Mr  Holman  asked  him  for  a  chew  of  tobacco.  Often  during 
that  session  I  saw  him  do  the  same  thing,  and  a  relative  of  mine  said: 
"Look  at  the  two  old  cronies  chewing  tobacco  together." 


Mr.  Bland  often  said  that  if  it  had  not  been  for  the  financial  question, 
and  the  unfortunate  disagreement  of  the  party,  that  Mr.  Cleveland's  two 
administrations  would  have  gone  down  into  history  as  having  been  the  era 
of  much  good  legislation;  that  many  good  bills  were  passed,  but  that  the 
financial  fight  obscured  everything  else. 


Mr.  Bland  sent  money  back  from  California  and  Nevada  to  help  edu 
cate  his  sister,  Mrs.  Tetley  (Bettie  Bland),  and  after  returning  from  the 
west  sent  his  younger  half-sister,  Mrs.  Goodykoontz  (Amanda  Black),  to 
school  at  Caledonia,  bringing  her  from  Kentucky. 


I  do  not  know  why  Mr.  Bland  seemed  to  shun  notoriety.  Perhaps  it 
was  because  he  was  left  early  without  a  father  and  mother  and  had  no  one 
to  confide  in  or  bring  him  out.  He  certainly  appreciated  a  kindness  and 
valued  his  political  friends.  Others  had  to  do  all  the  approaching  and  yet 
how  easily  he  was  to  approach  when  one  knew  just  how  to  do  it.  I  know 
I  did  not  fully  understand  him  until  we  had  been  married  a  long  time. 


300  AN  AMERICAN  COMMONER. 

Mr.  Bland  had  a  logical  mind  and  he  had  the  best  judgment  I  ever 
knew.  He  would  predict  what  the  outcome  of  certain  bills  would  be  and 
this  always  came  true.  I  always  found  myself  in  trouble  if  I  went  against 
his  advice  and  always  right  when  I  followed  it.  He  was  not  severe,  but 
as  he  was  older,  I  generally  depended  on  his  judgment. 


CHAPTER  XXXIV. 

THE  FINAL  WORD. 

This  Volume  as  a  Prophecy  of  Progress. — Evolution  a  Slow  Growth. — Intellectual 
Development  Dependent  on  Moral. — The  Sense  of  Justice  Mr.  Bland  Repre 
sented. — No  Justice  Without  Freedom,  No  Freedom  Without  Justice. — The 
Sympathy  of  Genius  for  Universal  Aspiration. — Political  Economy  and  the 
Law  of  Kindness. — The  Greatest  Development  of  Civilization  Still  in  the 
Future. 

|S  FAR  as  this  volume  is  inspired  by  the  spirit  which  dom 
inated  Mr.  Eland's  work,  it  is  a  prophecy  of  progress.  The 
great  evolutionary  forces  which  moved  in  him  and  through 
him  as  a  representative  American,  are  moving  still.  They 
will  never  go  backwards.  Progress  is  slow.  It  can  come  only  as  men 
make  it  possible  by  becoming  fit  for  it.  When  we  reach  a  certain  plane  of 
morals,  certain  things  are  within  our  intellectual  grasp  which  were  un 
imaginable  on  a  lower  plane.  Mr.  Eland's  life  and  work,  mean  that  prog 
ress  is  first  of  all  moral — that  when  once  such  moral  progress  is  developed, 
the  methods  by  which  it  will  express  itself  in  constructive  achievement  in 
all  its  diverse  forms,  will  suggest  themselves  at  once  to  intellects  fitted  to 
understand  the  best  possible  method  of  applying  them. 

Personally,  Mr.  Bland  was  remarkable  in  the  public  life  of  his  genera 
tion  for  the  faculty  on  which  civilization  most  depends — the  sense  of  jus 
tice.  Before  everything  else  and  above  everything  else  he  was  "a  just 
man"  in  the  scriptural  sense.  This  gave  him  the  keenness  of  perception 
which  belongs  only  to  genius.  Essentially  he  was  a  man  of  genius,  with 
all  the  physical  symptoms,  the  sensitiveness  and  suffering  it  entails.  The 
spirit  of  human  aspiration — the  keen  sympathy  of  genius  for  the  universal 
suffering  humanity  undergoes  in  its  upward  struggle,  moved  strongly  in 

him.     It  tortured  him  to  action.     He  suffered  much  for  others  in  attempt- 

301 


302  AN  AMERICAN  COMMONER. 

ing  to  do  his  work.  He  would  have  suffered  more,  however,  in  attempting 
to  evade  it.  He  was  driven  to  it  by  a  high  knowledge  of  the  realities  of 
things,  in  the  strength  of  which  he  saw  increasing  peace,  increasing  civili 
zation,  increasing  comfort  for  the  world,  increasing  usefulness  for  all 
men  in  it  as  possibilities  only  of  increasing  justice  and  of  that  liberty  which, 
as  it  begins  and  ends  in  justice,  is  its  necessary  expression.  "No  freedom 
without  justice,  no  justice  without  freedom" — this  is  the  message  of  his 
life. 

Back  of  statute  law  and  the  laws  of  political  economy  is  the  law  of 
kindness  and  helpfulness — of  the  natural  good  in  human  nature.  To  find 
methods  by  which  this  may  be  developed ;  to  make  men  freer  that  they  may 
express  what  is  good  in  them;  to  minimize  coercion;  to  obstruct  violence, 
to  humanize  government,  to  energize  society  with  a  spirit  by  grace  of  which 
each  will  desire  to  help  others  as  much  as  possible  rather  than  to  take  the 
utmost  possible  advantage  of  others — for  this  theory  of  government  and  of 
political  economy  Mr.  Bland  stood.  It  is  not  original.  It  is  not  new. 
It  is  the  spirit  of  civilization  itself  and  its  greatest  development  is  still 
in  the  future. 


SPEECHES 


MR.  RLAND  AT  FORTY-EIGHT. 
(From  a  Photograph  in  Mrs.  Eland's  Possession.) 


SPEECHES  FBOM  1870  TO  1899. 


S  AN  extemporaneous  speaker  on  any  topic  which  interested 
him,  Mr.  Bland  has  seldom  been  surpassed  in  effectiveness. 
His  control  of  simple  and  strong  English  is  so  nearly  complete 
that  his  ideas  flow  into  words  without  attracting  attention  from 
his  thought  to  the  manner  of  its  expression.  The  last  speech  he  delivered 
in  Congress — that  on  the  Army  Reorganization  bill,  in  January,  1899,  and 
his  speech  of  August  12,  1893,  are  examples  of  his  spontaneous  power  over 
words  which  can  be  appreciated  at  their  full  value  only  when  they  are  com 
pared  with  the  plain  English  of  the  speeches  of  John  Bright  or  with  the 
plainer  German  of  the  great  effort  of  Bismarck's  life,  the  plea  for  imperial 
armament  he  made  in  the  Reichstag,  February  6,  1888.  Mr.  Bland  is 
always  careless  of  rhetoric  and  at  times  he  is  too  loose  in  his  syntax, 
but  when  the  true  perspective  of  the  history  made  by  his  speeches  appears 
it  will  be  seen  that  he  was  a  worthy  coadjutor  of  plain  John  Bright  and  the 
forlorn  hope  of  plain  men  who,  after  the  Crimean  war  in  Europe  and  the 
Civil  war  in  America,  held  the  breach  for  civilization  against  the  militant 
commercialism  which  was  seeking  to  dominate  the  world  through  the 
"Blood  and  Iron"  methods  of  the  mediaevalism  for  which  Bismarck  stood 
in  Germany. 

.  In  their  relation  to  American  history  the  importance  of  Mr.  Eland's 
speeches  from  1 872  to  1899  can  hardly  be  overestimated.  It  is  not  too 
much  to  say  that  their  meaning,  as  they  represent  the  upward  impulses  of 
the  people,  must  be  clearly  grasped  before  it  is  possible  to  have  a  definite 
appreciation  of  the  meaning  of  the  movement  of  the  nineteenth  century  in 
America  and  Europe.  They  show  the  faculty  in  which  perhaps  Mr.  Bland 

excelled  every  other  public  man  in  America  during  his  generation — analyt- 
20  305 


2O6  AN    AMERICAN    COMMONER. 

ical  power  habitually  used  and  capable  of  focusing  on  any  given  subject 
every  other  power  of  his  mind.  By  virtue  of  this  power  and  this  habit,  he 
grasped  the  permanent  realities  of  great  questions  while  others  were  deal 
ing  only  with  their  transitory  phenomena.  It  happened  thus  that  while 
he  was  by  nature  gentle  and  unaggressive,  unwilling  to  wound,  reluc 
tant  to  punish,  and  prone  to  pardon  even  unrepented  injustice,  he  had  a 
power  to  force  issues  which  made  his  influence  co-extensive  with  civil 
ization.  His  speech  "At  the  Parting  of  the  Ways/'  on  August  12,  1893, 
is  superior  in  the  quality  of  its  thought  as  it  is  in  manner  to  the  most  care 
fully  prepared  speech  Thomas  H.  Benton  ever  delivered,  while  the  only 
speech  on  an  economic  topic  which  in  its  effect  on  American  history  can 
be  compared  to  it  is  that  with  which  Benton  opened  the  debate  on  the  Foot 
resolution  in  1830.  Benton's  speech  in  1830  provoked  the  debate  between 
Hayne  and  Webster,  and  its  importance  is  thus  not  wholly  intrinsic,  except 
as  it  represented  the  same  idea  which  inspired  Mr.  Bland — the  idea  that 
the  worst  abuses  of  government  are  sectional  or  class  laws  enacted  at 
the  dictation  of  those  who  wish  to  take  unfair  advantage  of  the  direct  pro 
ducer.  The  "Parting  of  the  Ways"  speech,  which  Mr.  Bland  rightly 
considered  the  most  important  speech  of  his  public  life,  produced  its  great 
results  through  its  own  intrinsic  force — a  force  with  which  Mr.  Eland's 
mind  had  become  electrically  charged  through  his  habitual  sympathy  with 
the  industrious,  virtuous  and  efficient  workers  of  Missouri,  of  the  west  and 
south,  of  America  and  of  the  world.  All  the  powers  of  his  intellect,  all 
the  impulses  of  his  life  moved  him  to  speak  for  a  cause  which  he  saw  others 
deserting.  The  crude  conceptions  of  eloquence  which  so  many  public  men 
derive  from  the  collection  of  hyperboles  and  climaxes  in  the  "Complete 
Orators"  of  their  debating  society  days,  had  no  effect  upon  him.  He 
spoke  the  English  of  everyday  life  with  a  true  Attic  plainness  of  phrase, 
and  with  a  force  above  the  utmost  possibilities  of  rhetoric.  "When  public 
bodies  are  to  be  addressed  on  momentous  occasions,"  says  Daniel  Webster, 
"when  great  interests  are  at  stake  and  ::rong  passions  excited,  nothing  is 


SPEECHES    FROM     iS^O    TO     1899.  307 

valuable  in  speech  further  than  it  is  connected  with  high  intellectual  and 
moral  endowments.  Clearness,  force,  and  earnestness  are  the  qualities 
which  produce  conviction.  True  eloquence,  indeed,  does  not  consist  in 
speech.  It  can  not  be  brought  from  far.  Labor  and  learning  may  toil 
for  it;  but  they  will  toil  in  vain.  Words  and  phrases  may  be  marshaled 
in  every  way;  but  they  can  not  compass  it.  It  must  exist  in  the  man,  in 
the  subject,  and  in  the  occasion.  Affected  passion,  intense  expression,  the 
pomp  of  declamation,  all  may  aspire  after  it — they  can  not  reach  it. 
It  comes,  if  it  come  at  all,  like  the  outbreaking  of  a  fountain  from  the  earth, 
or  the  bursting  forth  of  volcanic  fires,  with  spontaneous,  original,  native 
force.  The  graces  taught  in  the  schools,  the  costly  ornaments,  and  studied 
contrivances  of  speech,  shock  and  disgust  men  when  their  own  lives,  and 
the  fate  of  their  wives,  their  children,  and  their  country  hang  on  the  deci 
sion  of  the  hour.  Then,  words  have  lost  their  power,  rhetoric  is  vain,  and 
all  elaborate  oratory  contemptible.  Even  genius  itself  then  feels  rebuked 
and  subdued  as  in  the  presence  of  higher  qualities.  Then  patriotism  is 
eloquent ;  then  self-devotion  is  eloquent.  The  clear  conception  outrunning 
the  deductions  of  logic, — the  high  purpose, — the  firm  resolve, — the  daunt 
less  spirit,  speaking  on  the  tongue,  beaming  from  the  eye,  informing  every 
feature,  and  urging  the  whole  man  onward,  right  onward  to  his  object — 
this,  this  is  eloquence ;  or,  rather,  it  is  something  greater  and  higher  than  all 
eloquence, — it  is  action,  noble,  sublime,  godlike  action." 

Little  in  this  eulogy  of  John  Adams,  speaking  for  the  independence  of 
America,  need  be  changed  to  make  the  whole  apply  with  full  force  to  Bland 
as  he  rallied  a  retreating  party  back  to  standards  which  he  believed  with  all 
the  forces  of  his  nature  to  represent  the  world's  hope  of  justice  and  prog 
ress.  It  is  not  well  to  attribute  too  great  excellence  to  any  man,  and  it 
ought  to  be  remembered  when  we  see  Mr.  Bland  mastering  and  compelling 
those  who  had  underrated  and  depreciated  him,  that  the  power  he  exercised 
was  essentially  moral — a  power  which  belongs  to  every  virtuous  and 
manly  man  in  the  tull  measure  in  which  he  is  willing  to  exercise  it.  Asso- 


308  AN    AMERICAN    COMMONER. 

dating,  by  the  necessity  of  public  life,  with  that  too  large  class  in  all  parties 
who  are  demoralized  and  emasculated  by  the  deceits  of  politics,  Mr.  Bland 
retained  the  virility,  the  manliness,  which  can  come  only  from  virtue.  It 
happened  thus,  that  when  "silver  tongued  orators,"  made  famous  by 
intellectual  and  rhetorical  assumptions  of  virtue,  failed  at  the  climaxes  of 
their  careers  of  false  pretense  and  passed  over  to  the  left  hand  among  the 
fruitless  and  useless  of  all  generations,  he  stood  "to  give  the  world  assur 
ance  of  a  man." 

His  speeches  in  congress  cover  a  wide  range  of  subjects,  but  in  one 
way  or  another,  they  all  deal  with  the  fundamental  causes  of  progress 
and  reaction.  Mr.  Eland's  mind  was  so  constituted  that  he  found  it  diffi 
cult  to  deal  with  any  subject  without  analyzing  it  until  he  had  mastered  its 
governing  principles.  As  a  political  economist  and  specialist  he  was  a 
believer  in  progress  through  the  evolutionary  power  of  human  nature  con 
trolling  its  environment  in  the  measure  of  its  own  freedom  to  develop. 
Tracing  the  source  of  all  wealth  on  earth  to  the  earth  itself,  he  habitually 
applied  the  tests  of  his  principles  to  every  question  and  so  produced  in  the 
minds  of  the  ignorant  and  the  prejudiced  the  idea  that  he  was  a  specialist 
whose  habits  of  thought  and  expression  were  narrowed  to  the  demands  of  a 
single  subject.  Of  that  charge,  whether  made  openly  by  his  opponents  or 
insinuated  by  his  political  associates,  he  took  no  notice  during  his  life,  and 
he  needs  against  it  now  no  other  defense  than  the  speeches  here  presented. 
They  show  in  their  face  that,  while  Thomas  H.  Benton  is  the  only  other 
Missourian  who  can  compare  with  him,  he  is  above  Benton  in  power  to  give 
clear  and  definite  concepts,  a  clear  and  unmistakable  expression.  Missouri 
produced  during  the  nineteenth  century  many  public  men  who  belonged  to 
American  history,  but  among  them  Bland  is  the  only  one  who  belongs  un 
mistakably  to  the  history  of  civilization — to  the  world  as  it  is  now  and  still 
more  to  the  world  of  justice  and  generosity,  of  kindness  and  goodness,  of 
virtue  and  manliness  that  is  to  be  when  civilization  has  made  real  in  trade 
and  politics  the  fundamental  law,  that  "Right  Wrongs  No  Man." 


ENGLISH  PLUTOCRACY  AND  THE  LIBERTIES  OF 
THE  WORLD 

(Mr.  Eland's  Last  Speech  in   Congress,  Delivered  in  the  House  of  Representatives 
on  the  Army  Reorganization  Bill,  January  30,  1899). 

MR.  CHAIRMAN  :  It  seems  that  the  whole  country,  the  president,  and 
the  house  are  all  drifting  somewhere,  and  there  is  no  power  as  yet  to  deter 
mine  where  we  are  going.  We  are  passing  a  bill  increasing  the  army  to 
100,000  men  without  any  message  from  the  president  telling  us  for  what 
purpose  this  army  is  to  be  used,  nor  can  any  gentleman  on  the  other  side 
inform  as  to  the  particular  object  of  this  army.  We  are  either  deceiving 
ourselves — and  I  speak  more  especially  for  my  friends  on  the  other  side — 
or  this  is  a  deep-laid  plot  to  deceive  the  people  and  the  taxpayers  of  this 
country. 

If  we  propose  to  give  free  government  to  Cuba,  now  is  the  best  time 
to  do  it,  before  an  organized  system  of  plutocracy  and  trusts  and  combines 
have  been  permitted  to  loot  them  without  their  consent.  If  we  intend  to 
hold  the  Philippine  Islands,  if  it  is  not  the  intent  to  deceive  the  people  of 
this  country,  it  ought  to  be  avowed  right  here  and  now.  We  are  legislating, 
sir,  in  the  dark.  We  are  told  that  it  is  the  duty  of  this  government  to  main 
tain  law  and  order  in  the  Philippine  Islands  because  we  have  overthrown 
on  those  islands  the  Spanish  government.  I  deny  it.  It  is  true  we  took  the 
harbor  of  Manila  and  now  have  control  of  the  city;  but  beyond  that  the 
American  forces  have  never  gone  and  American  power  has  never  been  ex 
ercised. 

If  it  is  a  duty  of  honor  that  we  owe  the  foreigners  residing  in  the  city 
of  Manila,  then  let  us  protect  them  there;  and  the  city  of  Manila  and  the 
harbor  of  Manila  are  all  that  this  country  ever  needs  to  protect  or  needs  to 
occupy.  Why  not  understand  the  policy  that  is  to  be  pursued  before  we 
proceed  to  legislate  with  reference  to  it?  We  are  not  in  honor  bound  to 
protect  the  property  of  the  Philippine  Islands  or  the  people  of  those  islands, 
either  native  or  foreign  residents,  beyond  that  part  that  our  army  has  occu 
pied  and  occupies  to-day ;  and  if  it  is  our  policy  only  to  perform  that  part  of 
our  duty,  then  this  bill  for  100,000  men  is  wholly  and  absolutely  unneces 
sary. 

But  I  fear,  Mr.  Chairman,  that  we  have  been  led  into  this  thing,  not  so 

3°9 


310 


AN    AMERICAN    COMMONER. 


much,  probably,  by  the  will  really  of  the  administration  uninfluenced,  but 
somehow  or  in  some  way  the  idea  has  got  control  of  this  administration  that 
we  must  hold  the  Philippine  Islands  for  an  ulterior  purpose.  We  have  been 
informed  of  a  pressure  on  the  part  of  Great  Britain  to  induce  this  govern 
ment  to  maintain  its  authority  over  the  Philippine  Islands  for  the  purpose 
of  prosecuting  further  conquest  in  Chinese  waters  and  over  the  Chinese 
Empire.  That  is  the  secret  reason  of  this  bill ;  and  yet,  Mr.  Chairman,  the 
people  of  the  country  are  not  so  informed,  either  by  the  president  or  the 
majority  of  this  house. 

The  diplomacy  of  England  has  always  been  marvelous.  Isolated  as 
Great  Britain  is  among  the  nations  of  Europe,  with  great  colonial  posses 
sions  in  her  charge,  and  yet  greedily  seeking  to  force  her  way  into  China 
in  competition  with  all  Europe,  she  finds  that  allies  and  friends  are  neces 
sary  to  accomplish  this  object.  She  has  sought  by  every  means  that  diplo 
macy  could  devise  to  commit  us  to  a  policy  that  would  bring  about  the 
necessity  of  cooperating  with  her  in  order  to  carry  out  her  designs.  If 
England  can  succeed  in  inducing  the  American  government  to  hold  the 
Philippine  Islands  at  the  point  of  bayonets  (and  we  can  hold  them  no  other 
way),  it  is  quite  apparent  that  the  friendship  of  England  and  her  aid  will 
be  necessary  to  our  success. 

This  is  precisely  what  England  wants.  England  wishes  to  place  the 
United  States  in  a  position  of  dependency  on  her.  We  will  then  no  longer 
be  independent;  will  no  longer  have  the  position  of  absolute  segregation 
from  the  broils  of  the  Old  World.  Dependent  upon  England  to  hold 
Asiatic  territory,  we  must  of  necessity  aid  her  in  her  wars  of  conquest. 
It  may  be  well  to  have  the  friendship  of  England ;  in  fact,  the  friendship  of 
all  European  countries ;  but  it'  is  far  better  not  to  need  the  friendship  of  any. 
The  idea  of  a  standing  army  of  100,000  men  strikes  the  American  people 
with  horror.  It  forebodes  plutocratic  control  by  the  use  of  the  bayonet; 
it  looks  to  a  strong  centralized  power  with  an  army  at  its  back  to  subdue 
the  people  into  silence  and  to  plutocratic  methods. 

A  conservative  estimate  places  the  cost  of  each  soldier  in  our  Army  at 
$1,000  per  year  in  time  of  peace.  At  the  lowest  estimate  that  can  be  made 
with  safety  an  army  of  100,000  men  will  tax  the  people  of  this  country 
$100,000,000  annually.  If  this  army  must  be  utilized  in  the  subjugation  of 
the  Philippine  Islands,  the  cost  of  transportation  and  ammunition  and  dis 
ease  and  death,  resulting  in  pensions,  will,  in  all  probability,  tax  the  people 
of  this  country  $150,000,000  annually.  We  now  pay  out  about  $150,000,- 


SPEECHES    FROM    1870    TO     1899.  31  I 

000  annually  for  pensions,  which  is  charged  to  the  military  establishment, 
and  to  add  to  it  another  $150,000,000  would  make  a  sum  of  $300,000,000 
a  year  spent  as  the  result  of  war  and  the  prosecution  of  war,  as  contem 
plated  in  this  bill.     The  overtaxed  and  inhumanly  burdened  people  would 
cry  against  it.     This  army,  however,  will  be  used  to  repress  the  efforts  of 
the  people  to  throw  off  their  burdens  and  bring  about  reforms. 

I  can  not  but  regard  it  as  a  deep-laid  scheme  to  enslave  the  American 
people  under  the  present  domination  of  plutocracy.  English  influence  has 
been  thus  far  successfully  exerted  in  fixing  upon  our  people  the  English 
gold  standard.  The  power  of  the  Bank  of  England,  the  wealth  of  that 
country,  over  the  banks  and  moneyed  institutions  of  this  country  has 
brought  to  bear  the  combined  power  of  the  capitalists  of  England  and 
America  to  control  our  financial  system.  The  next  move  is  to  put  our  army 
and  navy  at  the  service  of  England  in  the  prosecution  of  Asiatic  conquest, 
the  end  of  which  no  man  can  see.  We  have  no  use  whatever  for  the  Philip 
pine  Islands.  To  annex  them  is  practically  to  abandon  the  Monroe  doc 
trine. 

Heretofore  we  have  asserted  our  supremacy  on  the  American  conti 
nent  ;  we  have  warned  the  world  that  we  would  not  permit  any  aggression 
or  conquest  upon  this  continent.  We  have  assumed  to  control  this  conti 
nent,  so  as  to  dedicate  it  as  fast  as  possible  to  free  government  and  human 
liberty.  We  now  propose  to  abandon  this  position  and  start  out  upon  a 
policy  of  conquest  and  aggression,  and  inflict  upon  the  people  of  Asiatic 
countries  a  government  not  of  their  choice,  but  compel  them  to  submit  to 
whatever  slavery  we  may  see  proper  to  inflict  upon  them.  We  not  only 
abandon  the  idea  of  America  for  American  institutions,  but  what  is  worse, 
we  give  the  lie  to  the  Declaration  of  Independence  "that  all  just  powers  of 
government  are  derived  from  the  consent  of  the  governed."  Against  this 

1  protest,  and  shall  vote  against  the  bill.     (Applause.) 


COLONIAL  IMPERIALISM  AND  THE  SPANISH  WARS. 

(Complete  Text  from  the  Official  Report  of  the  Speech  Delivered  in  the  House  of 
Representatives,  June  13,  1898,  the  House  Having  Under  Consideration  the  Joint 
Resolution — H.  Res.  259 — to  Provide  for  Annexing  the  Hawaiian  Islands  to  the 
United  States.) 

MR.  SPEAKER  :  In  entering  upon  a  discussion  of  this  important  ques 
tion  at  the  present  time,  we  should  not  forget  the  situation  that  confronts 
us.  Whatever  may  be  said  with  regard  to  the  ultimate  policy  of  this  gov 
ernment  toward  the  Hawaiian  Islands  or  as  to  the  importance  of  that  peo 
ple  and  that  country  in  relation  to  our  own,  this  is  not  the  time  to  enter 
upon  any  final  disposition  of  that  question.  We  are  now  in  the  midst  of 
a  war,  the  prosecution  of  which  was  entered  upon  for  a  certain  purpose. 

The  resolutions  that  passed  this  House  and  the  other  branch  of 
Congress  declaring  war  against  Spain  committed  this  government  ex 
pressly  to  the  sole  policy  of  freedom,  disclaiming  any  intention  of  an  ag 
gressive  warfare.  Cuba,  almost  a  part  of  our  own  territory,  the  most 
important  island  south  of  us,  would  be,  as  a  part  of  our  own  territory,  a 
means  of  defense  in  time  of  war  far  more  important  than  the  Hawaiian 
Islands.  Yet  in  order  that  the  civilized  world  might  know,  as  well  as  our 
own  people,  that  we  had  entered  upon  this  contest  in  the  interest  of  hu 
manity,  in  the  interest  of  freedom,  and  not  in  a  spirit  of  aggression,  we 
declared  that  the  sole  purpose  of  this  war  was  to  relieve  the  starving  and 
distressed  people  of  Cuba  and  to  extinguish  the  barbarity  of  Spanish  rule 
in  that  island. 

Our  war  resolutions  explicitly  stated  that  we  entered  on  no  war  for 
conquest,  and  that  we  would  not  annex  the  Island  of  Cuba,  but  would  give 
free  government  to  her  people.  That  was  the  declared  purpose,  and  that 
only.  For  that  purpose,  and  that  purpose  only,  have  we  voted  to  supply 
the  army  and  the  navy  of  the  United  States.  For  that  purpose,  and  that 
purpose  only,  have  the  American  people  sanctioned  unanimously  this  war 
as  being  a  holy  war. 

Why,  sir,  if  it  had  been  contended  here  when  we  were  entering  upon 
this  contest  that  it  was  intended  for  aggression,  for  the  seizure  of  the 
Hawaiian  Islands,  the  maintenance  of  our  sovereignty  in  the  China  Sea, 
that  it  was  intended  to  make  alliances  with  other  great  governments  in 

312 


SPEECHES    FROM    iSjO    TO     1899.  313 

order  to  participate  in  the  partition  of  China  and  to  make  aggressions  in 
the  Asiatic  waters — meaning  thereby  not  only  $500,000,000  of  interest- 
bearing  debt,  but  probably  four  times  that  amount,  meaning  thereby  not 
only  increased  taxation  upon  the  people  of  this  country  to  the  extent  of 
$150,000,000  annually  for  a  temporary  purpose,  but  a  debt  of  at  least 
$2,000,000,000  increased  taxation  for  a  purpose  without  limit  and  without 
termination — I  doubt  if  this  House  or  the  Senate  would  ever  have  made 
a  declaration  of  war  under  such  conditions.  And,  sir,  to  bring  forward 
this  policy  now  and  to  urge  this  measure  as  a  war  measure  is  simply  to 
write  on  the  statute  books  of  this  country  a  falsification  of  the  very  declar 
ations  that  we  made  in  going  to  war. 

A  war  measure !  There  is  no  Spanish  fleet  threatening  the  Hawaiian 
Islands.  No  one  pretends  that  the  possession  of  those  islands  is  necessary 
now  as  a  defense  of  our  coast.  But,  on  the  contrary,  Mr.  Speaker,  we 
have  assembled  to-day  at  San  Francisco  a  fleet  ready  to  transport  troops 
and  supplies  to  the  Philippine  Islands;  all  of  our  war  ships  are  practically 
leaving  that  coast  and  going  to  the  defense  of  Dewey  in  the  Philippine 
Islands  because  we  need  no  defense  on  that  coast. 

If  we  had  any  use  or  shall  have  any  need  of  a  base  for  coal  supplies 
and  a  harbor  of  refuge  at  Hawaii,  we  have  all  that  now  in  the  Sandwich 
Islands.  By  treaty  we  are  in  possession  of  Pearl  Harbor,  the  only  harbor 
on  the  Sandwich  Islands  that  is  suitable  for  this  purpose.  We  have  the 
sole  sovereign  control  of  this  harbor,  even  to  the  exclusion  of  the  govern 
ment  of  Hawaii.  We  now  own  and  control  a  naval  station  on  these  islands. 
We  need  nothing  more.  Even  admitting  that  there  is  or  should  be  a  ne 
cessity  for  a  coaling  station  there,  we  have  that  as  completely  and  as  ef 
fectually  as  we  could  have  it  by  owning  the  islands. 

Coal  has  never  been  found  on  the  Hawaiian  Islands,  and  a  coaling 
station  there  must  be  supplied  by  transporting  coal  to  the  islands  and 
storing  it  in  our  station  there — a  station  that  by  treaty  we  have  the  ex 
clusive  right  to  fortify  and  hold  against  the  world,  and  Pearl  Harbor  is 
the  only  place  on  the  whole  coast  of  Hawaii  where  such  a  station  is  at  all 
feasible.  No  other  nation  can  get  such  a  station  on  these  islands,  for 
there  is  no  other  practicable  harbor  there  to  possess. 

Why  undertake  to  deceive  ourselves  or  deceive  the  world  by  the 
hypocritical  cry  that  Hawaii  is  necessary  now  as  a  war  measure?  No 
intelligent  man  believes  such  a  statement. 

No,  sir,  we  started  out  protesting  against  the  system  of  colonization. 


AN    AMERICAN    COMMONER. 

We  have  from  the  beginning  denounced  the  idea  of  colonization.  We 
started  out  for  the  purpose  of  wresting  one  of  Spain's  colonies  from  her 
rule,  because  our  Government  is  hostile  to  the  idea  of  people  being  domi 
nated  as  a  colony.  In  vindication  of  our  antagonism  to  colonization  and 
our  position  in  favor  of  freedom,  our  flag  was  to  be  planted  by  our 
army  and  navy  upon  the  soil  of  Cuba.  Now,  on  the  contrary,  that  same 
flag — as  a  "war  measure,"  it  is  said — is  to  be  taken  and  planted  upon  the 
Island  of  Hawaii  without  the  consent  of  the  people  of  that  island.  Such 
a  policy  is  indefensible;  and  the  plea  which  is  put  forward  in  excuse  for 
it  has  no  foundation  in  fact  at  the  present  time. 

The  gentleman  from  Nevada  (Mr.  Newlands),  who  addressed  this 
House  a  short  time  ago,  undertook  to  put  himself  right  on  this  question 
by  disclaiming  any  idea  of  pressing  this  policy  of  colonization  into  the 
China  Seas  or  interfering  with  European  complications.  But  he  ought  to 
know  that  this  movement  for  the  annexation  of  Hawaii  is  simply  an  en 
tering  wedge  for  such  a  policy.  If  not,  Mr.  Speaker,  why  can  we  not  wait 
until  this  war  is  over  and  the  people  can  take  this  question  into  considera 
tion  without  reference  to  any  of  the  complications  existing  at  the  present 
time? 

The  fact  is,  the  government  of  Hawaii  as  now  constituted — not  the 
people  of  Hawaii — has  been  knocking  for  some  years  at  our  doors.  Dur 
ing  two  administrations,  or  during  a  period  beginning  at  the  close  of  one 
administration  and  extending  through  the  whole  of  another,  that  govern 
ment  has  been  presenting  itself  here.  But  up  to  this  hour,  Mr.  Speaker, 
there  has  been  a  steady  refusal  on  the  part  of  the  government  of  the 
United  States  to  accept  their  treaty  or  their  entreaties.  In  time  of  peace, 
when  this  question  could  be  considered  calmly  and  dispassionately,  when 
no  complications  were  involved,  when  no  pressure  could  be  made  under 
militarism  and  military  aggression,  we  have  refused  this  offer. 

But  now,  sir,  taking  advantage  of  a  declaration  of  war,  of  a  condition 
of  hostilities  with  the  bankrupt  government  of  Spain,  under  that  pressure 
and  in  violation  of  the  spirit  in  which  the  war  was  entered  upon,  a  policy  of 
aggression  and  a  policy  of  territorial  acquisition  is  urged.  It  will  not  do, 
Mr.  Speaker.  This  government,  after  having  made  its  solemn  declara 
tion  that  this  war  was  a  war  of  humanity  and  for  freedom,  can  not  afford 
now  to  pervert  it  into  a  selfish  policy  of  greed  and  oppression.  It  is  dis 
honorable.  It  does  not  become  a  great  nation  like  ours  to  perpetrate  a 
deception  upon  its  own  people  and  upon  others. 


SPEECHES    FROM    iSjO    TO     1899.  315 

Now,  Mr.  Speaker,  so  far  as  the  Philippine  Islands  are  concerned, 
I  do  not  believe  there  is  a  gentleman  on  either  side  of  this  House  who  is  not 
more  than  willing  and  anxious  to  make  complete  and  perfect  the  victory  so 
gallantly  won  by  Dewey,  the  most  notable,  probably,  in  the  annals  of  naval 
warfare.  We  will  not  abandon  the  Philippine  Islands  until  we  get  ready 
and  in  our  own  good  time.  But,  sir,  we  do  not  need  the  Hawaiian  Islands 
to  hold  the  Philippines. 

The  Philippine  Islands  were  a  part  of  the  territory  of  Spain.  Dewey 
and  his  fleet  being  in  Chinese  waters,  and  having  no  other  place  where 
they  could  go  for  the  purpose  of  inflicting  a  crushing  defeat  upon  the 
enemy  and  securing  a  base  of  operations,  went  into  the  harbor  and  fought 
that  battle  and  won  that  glorious  victory.  That  was  legitimate  war  upon 
the  enemy  against  whom  we  had  declared  war,  war  in  the  interest  of  free 
dom,  war  in  the  very  spirit  of  our  resolutions.  Being  Spanish  territory, 
legitimately  acquired,  we  will  hold  these  islands  until  this  war  is  over,  and 
that  problem  can  then  be  solved. 

Solved  how?  I  may  not  stop  here  to  argue  that  question,  but  there 
is  only  one  true  way  to  solve  it.  We  can  not  sell  the  islands,  because  we 
have  no  right  as  a  free  people  to  undertake  to  sell  a  people  or  a  part  of 
a  people  we  have  conquered.  They  deserve  the  boon  of  liberty  as  much 
as  do  the  people  of  Cuba;  and  if,  in  the  providence  of  God,  those  islands 
are  also  freed  and  turned  over  to  their  own  people  for  'Self-government 
as  Cuba  must  be  freed,  it  simply  adds  to  our  lustre  and  does  not  detract 
from  it. 

But  we  can  not  honorably  do  anything  else  with  those  islands.  We 
can  not  profitably  hold  them  permanently,  because  the  holding  of  them 
would  involve  us  in  all  the  diplomatic  relations  with  European  and  Asiatic 
politics,  against  which  entanglements  we  have  from  the  beginning  pro 
tested. 

So  far  as  Puerto  Rico  is  concerned,  I  believe  that  it  is  the  duty  of  this 
government  to  drive  Spain  from  that  island  and  forever  quit  her  dominion 
over  it.  Because  we  have  begun  a  war  against  Spain,  that  is  the  govern 
ment  which  it  is  proper  to  vanquish  as  far  as  possible  in  accomplishing  our 
great  purposes  of  liberty,  and  I  say  that  the  driving  of  the  Spanish  from  the 
island  of  Puerto  Rico  is  not  only  legitimate,  but  I  believe  it  to  be  neces 
sary  for  the  peace  and  security  of  our  country  in  the  future. 

Spain  is  a  bad  neighbor,  but  after  we  have  extinguished  the  last  au 
thority  of  Spain  in  this  hemisphere  and  practically  established  the  Monroe 


316  AN    AMERICAN    COMMONER. 

doctrine,  shall  we  abandon  that  policy  and  start  upon  the  Asiatic  seas, 
among  Asiatic  populations,  in  countries  devoted  to  Asiatic  civilization, 
unnecessary  in  peace,  wholly  unnecessary  in  war,  and  perpetrate  the 
wrongs  that  will  be  perpetrated  by  the  passing  of  these  resolutions  ? 

Why,  gentlemen  tell  us  that  the  government  of  Hawaii  favors  this 
proposition.  I  use  that  word  only  as  recognizing  those  having  authority 
there — the  representatives  of  a  few  thousand — probably  three  or  four  thou 
sand  among  a  hundred  thousand — the  white  intelligent  race  ruling  the 
Chinese,  Japanese  and  Portuguese,  as  the  intelligent  white  Caucasian  race 
will  rule  the  inferior  race  wherever  they  are  brought  together.  You  gen 
tlemen  on  that  side  who  have  undertaken  to  make  issues  here  against  some 
of  the  southern  states  upon  this  proposition  show  where  you  stand  to-day 
when  you  are  willing  to  countenance  the  government  of  an  island  by  a 
few  white  people  at  the  expense  of  extreme  domination  over  an  inferior 
race.  (Applause  on  the  Democratic  side.) 

Hawaii  is  2,500  miles  from  San  Francisco,  the  nearest  important 
port  on  our  seacoast.  Hawaii  has  a  population  of  pure  and  mixed  natives, 
39,504;  Chinese,  21,616;  Portuguese,  15,291,  or  a  total  population  of  101,- 
818  that  may  be  denominated  as  an  inferior  race.  A  large  portion  of 
this  population  we  have  by  treaty  and  statute  undertaken  to  exclude  from 
our  shores  because  they  are  undesirable. 

There  are  British  residents  on  the  island,  2,250;  Germans,  1,432; 
Americans,  3,080.  Of  the  Caucasian  race,  which  dominates  and  controls, 
there  are  only  6,762. 

Under  the  constitution  of  Hawaii  no  one  can  vote  without  swearing 
to  support  that  constitution,  and  it  so  happens  that  this  constitution  pro 
vides  for  annexing  the  island  to  the  United  States.  This  constitution  was 
forced  upon  the  people  of  the  island  by  a  handful  of  Americans,  and  has 
disfranchised  all  the  inhabitants  of  the  island  who  will  not  swear  that  they 
will  vote  to  surrender  their  native  land  to  another  government  before  they 
are  permitted  to  vote.  This  may  be  called  a  free  ballot,  but  it  has  the 
appearance  of  a  ballot  offered  to  the  voter  in  one  hand  with  the  condition 
of  his  voting  that  he  surrender  his  birthright,  and  if  he  refuses  this  condi 
tion  a  sword  is  held  in  the  other  hand  to  strike  down  the  ballot  and  to  dis 
franchise  the  voter.  It  is  a  government  thus  organized  that  presents  the 
treaty  that  we  propose  to  accept  by  the  resolutions  pending  before  this 
House.  I  deny  that  the  people  of  the  island  have  been  fairly  consulted  in 
this  transaction.  It  is  a  scheme  to  force  a  robbery,  pure  and  simple,  that 


SPEECHES    FROM     1870    TO     1899.  317 

we  are  called  upon  to  sanction  and  enforce. 

MR.  TAWNEY:     Will  the  gentleman  allow  an  interruption? 

MR.  BLAND  :     I  have  but  thirty  minutes. 

MR.  TAWNEY:  I  simply  desire  to  ask  whether  you  know  that  the 
Senate  of  Hawaii  which  ratified  the  treaty  is  composed  largely  of  native 
Hawaiians  ? 

MR.  BLAND  :  Oh,  Mr.  Speaker,  I  am  not  speaking  of  natives  or  for 
eigners.  There  are  a  few  white  natives.  I  am  speaking  of  the  population 
of  that  island,  and  especially  the  population  to  whom  that  island  by  na 
tivity  belongs.  When  the  gentleman  presses  that  question,  it  as  an  ad 
mission  that  he  has  disfranchised  them  by  the  wholesale,  and  the  pretense 
that  they  are  presenting  this  treaty  here  voluntarily  is  a  fraud  and  a  lie 
upon  its  face. 

MR.  TAWNEY  :     Do  you  not  also  know — 

THE  SPEAKER  pro  tempore :  Does  the  gentleman  from  Missouri  yield 
to  the  gentleman  from  Minnesota  ? 

MR.  BLAND  :  I  can  not  yield  any  further.  I  have  not  the  time.  The 
gentleman  can  speak  in  his  own  time. 

MR.  TAWNEY  :     I  simply  wanted  to  call  your  attention  to  the  fact — 

MR.  BLAND  :  I  do  not  want  to  be  discourteous  to  the  gentleman,  but 
I  have  only  thirty  minutes. 

Now,  Mr.  Speaker,  I  am  not  here  to  denounce  the  American  people 
upon  that  island  for  their  Americanism.  I  am  here,  so  far  as  justice  and 
right  will  permit  it,  to  uphold  them  and  to  turn  to  them  our  support  for 
whatever  sympathy  they  have  given  us  in  this  struggle.  If  they  have 
violated  any  of  the  principles  of  neutrality,  if  they  have  subjected  them 
selves  to  any  claim  of  damages  from  Spain,  this  great  government  of  ours 
stands  ready  to  foot  the  bill  four  times  over,  if  necessary. 

When  we  come  to  treat  with  Spain  we  may  have  a  much  larger 
bill  of  damages  than  Spain  can  possibly  present  to  Hawaii.  Gentlemen 
know,  and  the  ruling  powers  in  Hawaii  know,  that  they  are  perfectly  safe 
in  any  favors  they  give  to  this  great  government.  Not  only  that,  but  they 
know  that  in  the  future,  as  well  as  in  the  past,  this  government  intends 
that  no  hostile  power  shall  ever  dominate  those  islands. 

That  has  been  our  pledge  and  our  policy  from  the  beginning.  The 
resolutions  to  be  offered  by  us  as  a  substitute  for  annexation  provides 
that  we  shall  forever  guarantee  independence  to  the  Sandwich  Islands. 
This  is  a  mere  pretext  thrown  in  here  under  the  war  spirit  to  perpetrate 


318  AN    AMERICAN    COMMONER. 

upon  the  people  of  this  country  what  I  conceive  to  be  a  wrong;  not  so 
much  now  in  the  acquisition  of  Hawaii  as  in  what  it  looks  to  in  the  future 
for  the  acquisition  of  territory  beyond. 

Why,  they  tell  us  that  the  acquisition  of  territory  is  nothing  new. 
That  is  very  true.  The  policy  of  our  government  heretofore,  and  its  prac 
tice,  has  been  to  admit  territory  that  was  contiguous,  until  we  have  become 
a  homogeneous  people.  All  of  our  territory,  except  that  which  we  ac 
quired  from  Russia,  is  connected  by  land  and  subject  to  defense.  The 
great  land  power  of  the  world  to-day  is  this  country.  The  next  great  land 
power  is  Russia.  No  government  since  1812  has  ever  attempted  to  invade 
the  United  States  of  America. 

No  one  has  ever  attempted  to  invade  Russia  since  the  disaster  that 
overtook  Napoleon  in  his  retreat  from  Moscow.  Here  we  are  pursuing  a 
policy  of  our  own  under  the  teachings  of  our  fathers  to  abstain  from  all 
trans-Atlantic  aggressions,  complications,  or  alliances,  building  up  for  our 
selves  a  compact  territory,  as  far  as  honor  will  permit,  remaining  at  peace 
with  all  the  world,  and  we  have  grown  up  to  be  the  most  powerful  nation 
in  the  world  by  pursuing  this  policy. 

To-day  we  are  at  war  with  Spain.  And  what  has  been  the  policy  of 
Spain?  Precisely  the  policy  that  we,  by  these  resolutions,  are  invited  to 
enter  upon.  But  a  short  time  ago  in  modern  history  Spain  was  the  most 
powerful  nation,  probably,  on  earth.  She  had  her  colonies  in  every  land 
and  fronting  on  every  sea.  In  Europe  was  her  great  kingdom  and  its 
dependencies.  The  whole  of  South  America  practically  was  hers,  and 
part  of  our  own  North  America  was  under  her  flag. 

These  colonies  and  the  support  of  them  have  brought  Spain  to  ruin 
and  bankruptcy.  She  is  unable  longer  to  continue  that  policy.  The  last 
of  her  colonies  upon  this  continent  are  about  to  be  taken  from  her,  and 
nearly  all  upon  the  other.  This  is  the  policy  which  has  brought  ruin  and 
disaster  to  her,  so  that  she  is  hardly  a  respectable  enemy  in  a  conflict  with 
a  nation  that  has  pursued  the  opposite  policy,  that  has  eschewed  coloniza 
tion  and  eschewed  the  idea  that  we  must  go  over  the  world  in  order  to  map 
out  colonies  here  and  there  as  a  place  for  American  settlement  and  on 
which  to  plant  the  American  flag,  and  by  which  we  will  be  involved  in 
large  expense  in  order  to  maintain  and  defend  them. 

Here  is  the  contrast  of  the  two  nations  to-day.  Let  us  not  depart 
from  our  policy.  This  is  a  departure,  and  a  dangerous  departure. 

Some  one  asked  the  question  a  while  ago  how  these  islands  would  be 


SPEECHES    FROM    1870    TO     1899.  319 

governed  if  we  acquired  them.  It  could  not  be  answered.  No  gentleman 
has  undertaken  to  answer  that  question.  It  is  left,  I  suppose,  for  the 
future  consideration  of  Congress. 

Suppose  you  had  that  question  here  now,  as  you  will  have  it  if  you 
annex  them.  How  are  you  going  to  govern  them  ?  Is  it  to  free  a  people  ? 
No.  You  know  you  do  not  intend  to  do  it.  Do  you  intend  to  give  the 
ballot  to  the  people  of  Hawaii  ?  You  know  you  do  not,  although  the  con 
stitution  declares  that  everyone  born  in  the  United  States  shall  have  the 
right  to  vote,  that  he  is  a  citizen,  at  least,  and  shall  not  be  disfranchised  on 
account  of  race  or  previous  condition. 

Now,  the  question  arises,  When  it  becomes  a  part  of  the  territory  of 
the  United  States,  and  there  are  those  born  on  that  territory,  what  are 
you  going  to  do  with  them  ?  Are  they  citizens  or  not  ? 

MR.  LANHAM  :  If  the  gentleman  will  permit  me  to  interrupt  him, 
would  they  not  be  subject  to  taxation  if  annexed  to  the  United  States? 
And  if  so,  would  they  not  logically  be  entitled  to  representation? 

MR.  BLAND  :  Well,  I  think  as  a  matter  of  course,  if  we  are  to  annex 
the  Hawaiian  Islands,  and  they  are  to  be  governed  as  citizens  of  the  United 
States,  we  are  bound  to  permit  them  to  exercise  all  the  rights  of  citizenship 
and  the  right  of  the  ballot ;  because  we  have  no  right  to  tax  them  without 
representation. 

The  Constitution  of  the  United  States  provides  that  every  person  born 
in  the  United  States  is  a  citizen  thereof.  It  also  provides  that  no  citizen 
of  the  United  States  shall  be  disfranchised  on  account  of  race,  color,  or 
previous  condition  of  servitude.  An  important  question  in  this  connec 
tion  arises  here.  There  are  39,504  natives  on  the  island,  nearly  all  of 
whom  are  of  the  inferior  race.  There  are  only  3,000  Americans.  When 
Hawaii  becomes  a  part  of  the  territory  of  the  United  States  what  shall  be 
said  as  to  the  legal  status  of  these  39,000  natives  ?  May  they  not  claim  the 
right  of  native  citizenship,  because  the  territory  would  then  be  a  part  of 
the  United  States  ?  They  would  also  be  natives  of  that  part  of  the  United 
States. 

It  is  true  that  at  the  date  of  their  birth  they  were  not  natives  of  the 
United  States,  but  so  soon  as  the  territory  becomes  a  part  of  the  United 
States  they  would  claim  and  reasonably  insist  that  they  are  natives  of  this 
country.  They  would  insist  that  the  Constitution  did  not  intend  to  confine 
nativity  to  the  territory  belonging  to  the  United  States  at  the  time  of  the 
adoption  of  this  amendment  to  the  Constitution  of  the  United  States,  but 


320 


AN    AMERICAN    COMMONER. 


that  it  necessarily  includes  whatever  territory  might  at  any  time  come 
within  the  jurisdiction  of  the  Constitution. 

Also,  what  will  be  the  status  of  the  children  born  of  Chinese,  Japan 
ese,  and  Portuguese  parentage?  In  other  words,  will  not  the  native  infe 
rior  race  under  the  Constitution  become  voters  so  soon  as  the  territory  is 
admitted,  and  will  not  this  fact  place  the  whole  government  in  the  hands 
of  the  inferior  race  beyond  hope  of  redemption  ?  Will  such  a  population 
add  to  the  glory  and  security  of  our  institutions,  or  will  not  the  superior 
race  find  some  pretext  to  disfranchise  the  inferiors  after  they  have  been  ad 
mitted,  since  we  know  they  did  that  in  order  to  form  a  treaty  of  admission  ? 

MR.  SMITH,  of  Arizona :  Do  not  we  do  it  in  the  territories  of  the 
United  States? 

MR.  BLAND:  But  my  friend  must  remember  that  in  all  the  admis 
sions  of  territory  and  annexation  of  territories,  most  of  which  was  done 
by  the  policy  of  Jefferson  and  his  democratic  confreres,  it  had  been  ter 
ritory  the  climatic  conditions  of  which  was  admissible  for  the  Caucasian 
race,  admitted  for  the  very  purpose  of  settlement  by  our  own  people  and 
our  own  race,  and  all  these  admissions  of  territory  of  suitable  climate  and 
soil,  and  being  contiguous,  it  was  a  fit  home  for  the  American  citizen ;  and 
so  it  is  with  your  territory,  and  if  you  are  not  admitted  as  a  state  it  is 
not  because  you  are  Chinese  or  Japanese,  but  because  you  produce  silver. 
That  is  your  crime. 

But  I  say  the  same  government  would  practically  be  introduced  in 
Hawaii  as  is  there  now — a  government  that  you  on  the  other  side  of  this 
House  have  denounced  upon  this  floor.  That  is  one  where  the  intelligence 
and  the  property-holding  element  control.  And  they  will  find  a  way  to 
control  in  that  island  as  they  have  everywhere.  But  do  you  want  any  more 
such  territories?  Have  we  not  enough  now  of  race  prejudice  and  race 
conflict  in  this  country?  This  race  question  is  not  settled  here,  Mr. 
Speaker.  It  is  one  of  the  most  perplexing  problems  in  the  future  of  this 
government  to  settle,  and  the  more  perplexities  you  add  to  it  the  more 
difficult  and  the  more  dangerous  it  becomes. 

But,  Mr.  Speaker,  it  is  a  pleasing  thing  to  jingoism,  the  idea  of  plant 
ing  upon  the  seas  war  stations  for  the  American  flag !  They  believe  that 
it  is  great  and  glorious ;  but  it  may  end  in  a  denial  of  suffrage  to  the  peo 
ple  you  acquire,  to  place  them  under  the  control  of  military  governors  and 
improvised  congressional  legislation. 

Now,  Mr.  Speaker,  I  have  said  that  the  future  of  Hawaii  is  somewhat 


m#-.& 


MR.  BLAND  ON  HIS  FARM. 


SPEECHES    FROM    iSjO    TO    1899.  321 

perplexing.  Of  course  we  all  understand  that.  We  do  not  propose  that 
they  shall  fall  into  the  hands  of  another  government  hostile  to  ours.  It 
is  not  necessary  to  annex  them  in  order  to  carry  out  that  policy.  It  is  un 
derstood  now.  There  is  no  danger  of  it. 

The  prime  movers  for  the  annexation  of  Hawaii  boldly  assert  on  this 
floor,  and  we  find  it  everywhere  in  the  plutocratic  press  of  the  country, 
that  Hawaii  is  necessary  to  us  in  our  new  policy.  This  new  policy  is  de 
fined  as  being  the  permanent  occupation  of  the  Philippine  Islands,  Cuba, 
Puerto  Rico,  and  whatever  other  territory  we  may  conquer  during  this 
war,  and  more  still,  they  tell  us  that  we  must  make  alliances  with  England 
and  Japan,  if  not  openly,  then  secretly,  to  the  end  that  we  may  participate 
in  carving  up  and  parceling  out  the  Chinese  Empire. 

They  tell  us  that  this  must  be  done  in  order  to  push  our  trade  in  the 
Orient.  We  are  to  be  brought  immediately  into  conflict  with  France, 
Germany,  Russia,  Italy,  and  Austria,  in  these  enterprises.  We  are  solaced 
with  the  a*  Durances  that  there  are  no  dangers  of  war.  We  are  told  that 
even  if  war  should  come,  that  the  United  States,  England,  and  Japan  could 
hold  their  own  against  the  world.  This  is  called  our  new  destiny.  Every 
intelligent  man  knows  that  all  the  nations  that  I  have  named  are  armed  to 
the  teeth.  They  present  a  military  camp  and  they  have  immense  navies. 
The  laboring  and  producing  people  of  these  countries  have  been  taxed  in 
order  to  keep  up  these  military  establishments  until  they  are  mere  slaves 
to  plutocratic  power  as  represented  in  militarism.  Millions  of  them  have 
come  to  our  shores  because  we  were  exempt  from  the  necessities  of  mili 
tary  rule. 

They  love  our  country  because  they  find  freedom  here  from  the 
enormous  burdens  and  the  degrading  tyranny  of  the  governments  of  the 
Old  World.  Shall  we  enter  upon  a  policy  that  requires  immense  navies 
and  standing  armies  and  that  involves  the  enormous  taxation  necessary 
to  maintain  them?  If  we  are  to  prosecute  this  war  for  such  purposes  it 
will  be  a  source  of  disappointment  to  the  people  who  entered  upon  it  in  the 
interest  of  freedom  and  not  of  slavery.  Such  a  policy  as  this  is  intended 
and  is  urged  by  its  promoters  for  the  purpose  of  building  up  in  this  country 
a  centralized  power  of  wealth  with  big  standing  armies  and  navies  to  pro 
tect  this  plutocratic  control.  When  our  people  complain,  as  the  taxpayers 
will  complain,  of  the  burdens  thus  imposed  upon  them,  plutocracy 
expects  to  be  able  with  military  power  to  answer  their  petition,  if  neces 
sary,  with  an  array  of  bayonets. 

21 


322 


AN    AMERICAN    COMMONER. 


THE  SPEAKER,  pro  tempore :     The  time  of  the  gentleman  has  expired. 

MR.  BLAND  :     I  would  like  about  five  minutes  more. 
•   MR.  DINSMORE:     I  yield  five  minutes  to  the  gentleman. 

MR.  BLAND  :  And  that  is  where  this  will  lead  to.  That  is  why  I  ob 
ject  to  it  at  this  time.  It  is  because  the  promoters  of  the  annexation  of 
Hawaii  foreshadow  a  policy  such  as  I  have  alluded  to  that  I  most  strenu 
ously  object  to  the  admission  at  this  time. 

I  would  oppose  the  annexation  of  Hawaii  under  any  circumstances, 
but  to  annex  Hawaii  with  the  avowed  purpose  of  using  Hawaii  as  a  prece 
dent,  and  also  as  an  aid  to  the  acquisition  and  permanent  occupation  of 
colonies  everywhere  and  for  the  purpose  of  entering  upon  schemes  of 
imperialism,  meets  my  earnest  and  emphatic  protest. 

You  are  simply  on  the  road  to  despotism  in  this  country  in  trying  to 
free  the  little  Island  of  Cuba.  You  are  on  the  road  to  imperialism,  with  a 
large  navy  and  standing  armies  and  oppressive  taxation,  oppressing  labor 
by  putting  it  down  by  the  military,  and  adopting  a  military  government  in 
stead  of  republican  institutions  and  constitutional  liberty.  That  is  in 
volved  in  this  very  discussion. 

You  may  go  on  for  a  while  under  the  military  spirit  and  excitement 
of  war,  but  the  day  will  come  for  reckoning  when  your  bills  are  to  be 
footed,  when  your  taxes  are  to  be  paid,  when  bond  after  bond  is  to  be  is 
sued,  and  when  the  starving  labor  begins  to  "cry  'Peace/  when  there  is  no 
peace."  Your  day  of  reckoning  will  come,  and  I  call  a  halt  now,  for  now 
is  the  time. 

Some  gentlemen  have  spoken  to  me  about  leprosy  and  lepers.  Why, 
Mr.  Speaker,  I  have  not  time  to  go  into  all  these  questions.  No  intelli 
gent  man  here  can  be  deceived  as  to  the  population  of  the  Hawaiian 
Islands.  Any  intelligent  man  here  knows  that  they  are  not  our  equals  in 
any  sense  of  the  word.  They  do  not  comprehend  our  system  of  govern 
ment.  They  are  wholly  incapable  of  understanding  it.  Yet  they  are  en 
titled  to  freedom. 

It  does  not  matter  whether  they  can  govern  themselves  as  well  as  we 
can  or  not.  They  are  entitled  to  try  the  experiment  of  self-government. 
It  belongs  to  them,  or  else  the  Declaration  of  Independence  is  a  lie  in  itself. 
And  so  it  is  with  Cuba,  so  it  is  with  Puerto  Rico,  so  it  is  with  the  Philip 
pine  Islands.  We  can  do  no  more  than  to  turn  over  whatever  territory 
comes  under  our  jurisdiction  to  their  people,  free  to  do  with  it  as  they 
please.  And  if  in  the  providence  of  God  they  are  capable  of  self-govern- 


SPEECHES    FROM    iSjO    TO     1899.  323 

ment,  they  will  succeed.     Above  all,  our  consciences  will  be  free  and  our 
liberties  not  endangered.     (Applause.) 


IN  FAVOR  OF  LIBERTY  FOR  ALL  MEN. 

(Peroration  of  a  Fourth  of  July  Address,  Delivered  at  Lebanon,  Missouri,  in  1873). 

Nearly  forty  millions  of  Americans  rejoice  in  the  blessings  of  liberty, 
purchased  by  the  blood  of  the  truest  and  the  bravest  people  the  sun  in 
Heaven  ever  beheld.  Shall  we  to-day  make  new  resolves  to  be  worthy  of 
this?  Shall  we  form  an  enduring  link  in  the  chain  of  our  country's  his 
tory?  To  us  is  committed  for  a  short  time  this  priceless  heritage.  By 
the  memories  of  the  past,  by  the  weighty  responsibilities  of  the  present, 
and  all  that  we  hold  dear  on  earth  in  the  future,  let  us  be  encouraged  to 
act  well  our  part.  No  republican  government  can  stand  unless  the  people 
are  educated,  morally  and  intellectually.  Upon  the  virtue  and  intelligence 
of  the  American  people  depends  the  last  hope  of  man  for  self-govern 
ment.  So  long  as  the  masses  are  uncorrupted,  there  is  no  danger;  for  if 
their  servants  should  prove  unworthy,  they  can  easily  be  displaced.  It 
was  not  until  the  people  of  Rome  became  money-worshipping  and  corrupt 
that  Caesar  dared  cross  the  Rubicon,  and  cast  the  die  of  his  country's 
liberties  in  the  fortunes  of  civil  war.  May  the  guidance  of  Heaven  shield 
us  from  such  a  fate,  or  from  that  of  Greece  as  Byron  sings  it : 

"Twere  long  to  tell  and  sad  to  trace 
Each  step  from  splendor  to  disgrace! 
Enough!     No  foreign  foe  could  quell 
Thy  soul  till  from  itself  it  fell! 
Yes,  self-abasement  paved  the  way 
To  villain  bonds  and  despot  sway!" 

Long,  long  may  our  banner  float  aloft  on  every  sea  as  the  emblem  of 
freedom;  and  as  the  stars  of  Heaven  soften  with  their  silver  rays  the 
darkness  of  night's  solitude  and  gloom,  speaking  in  air  tongues  to  ad 
monish  the  nations  that  there  is  a  God  who  rules  the  Universe  with  exact 
justice,  so  let  each  star  in  our  flag,  moving  undimmed  and  unfettered  in 
its  proper  orbit,  symbolize  as  that  flag  waves  in  every  clime,  that  here  un 
der  its  ample  folds,  liberty  and  justice  are  guaranteed  to  all;  "Whether 
they  be  red,  black,  white,  olive,  or  tawny-colored." 


"THE  PARTING  OF  THE  WAYS." 

(Delivered  in  the  House  of  Representatives  Saturday,  August  12,  1893,  in  Protest 
Against  the  Bill — H.  R.  i — to  Repeal  a  Part  of  an  Act  Approved  July  4,  1890,  en 
titled  "An  Act  Directing  the  Purchase  of  Silver  Bullion  and  the  Issue  of  Treas 
ury  Notes  Thereon  and  for  Other  Purposes.") 

MR.  SPEAKER:  I  regret  to  be  called  upon  to  discuss  this  question 
without  previous  preparation,  when  we  have  just  reached  an  agreement 
to  take  it  up.  I  further  regret  ttiat  any  gentleman  on  our  side  of  the  House 
should  see  proper  to  read  in  this  presence  one  part  of  our  platform  and  to 
retreat  from  that  part,  above  all  others,  which  contributed  to  the-  vote  that 
gave  him  a  seat  in  this  House.  I  regret  that  any  western  man  should  turn 
his  face  toward  the  east  and  his  back  to  the  west. 

We  understood,  Mr.  Speaker,  what  that  platform  meant.  The  whole 
democratic  party  voted  against  the  Sherman  bill,  and  so  far  as  I  am  per 
sonally  concerned,  I  did  what  little  my  ability  permitted  me  to  do  to  pre 
vent  its  passage  in  this  house ;  but  the  so-called  Sherman  law  passed,  and 
a  better  law  having  been  repealed  by  its  passage,  it  is  now  the  only  law  on 
the  statute  books  looking  to  the  use  of  silver  as  money  in  this  country. 

I  know,  Mr.  Speaker,  that  the  gold-standard  elements,  the  very  ele 
ments  that  are  in  opposition  to  the  free  coinage  of  silver,  secured  the 
passage  of  that  act.  I  knew  they  would  demand  its  repeal  the  moment 
they  saw  the  opportunity.  A  promise  to  repeal  that  act  was  put  in  the 
platform  at  Chicago,  I  suppose,  to  satisfy  that  element  of  the  democratic 
party  that  wants  no  law  upon  the  statute  book  for  the  coinage  of  silver. 
But  following  that,  and  in  the  same  paragraph,  a  part  and  parcel  of  it  at 
least,  was  the  promise  made  at  Chicago  by  the  democratic  party*  for  the 
use  of  both  gold  and  silver  as  money  in  this  country,  with  equal  privileges 
at  the  mints  of  our  government.  And  speaking  for  myself  and  for  the 
people  whom  I  have  the  honor  to  represent,  they  understood  at  least,  that 
the  free  coinage  of  silver,  in  accordance  with  our  platform,  necessarily  re 
pealed  the  Sherman  law;  and  it  would.  (Applause.) 

The  two  laws  can  not  exist  together.  They  are  inconsistent,  and 
that  part  of  the  platform  that  pledged  us  to  the  free  coinage  of  silver  nec 
essarily  meant  the  repeal  of  the  Sherman  law  by  a  free  coinage  bill. 

I  want,  Mr.  Speaker,  to  call  attention  to  this  phase  of  the  situation. 
We  have  here  different  propositions  that  will  be  voted  upon,  submitted  in 

324 


SPEECHES    FROM     iSjO    TO     1899.  325 

pursuance  of  the  Chicago  platform,  if  you  please  to  call  it  so.  Gentlemen 
may  choose  their  ratio.  They  have  an  opportunity  at  least  to  express 
their  own  opinions  by  their  votes  in  this  House  and  by  their  speeches,  and 
to  state  what  they  mean  by  the  free  coinage  of  silver  and  the  Chicago 
platform. 

It  is  not  my  privilege  nor  my  purpose  to  call  in  question  the  sincerity 
of  any  member  upon  this  floor  or  to  undertake  to  criticise  his  attitude; 
but  I  do  want  to  call  attention  to  the  fact  that  we  are  proposing,  as  I  con 
sider  it,  to  try  in  good  faith  to  conform  ourselves  to  the  platform  on  which 
we  were  elected  in  legislating  upon  this  question. 

Why,  it  is  said  we  have  met  here  under  peculiar  circumstances,  in  the 
midst  of  a  financial  crisis.  We  are  asked  by  the  opposite  side  to  legislate 
in  haste.  We  are  asked  to  forego  a  part  of  our  duties.  We  are  asked  to 
legislate  by  piecemeal,  and  to  take  our  chances  in  the  future. 

I  want  to  say,  Mr.  Speaker,  that  the  great  voting  masses  of  the  people 
of  this  country  may  get  into  a  panic  themselves  when  election  day  comes 
around.  The  people  will  not  regard  our  proceedings  in  the  light  that 
gentlemen  wish  them  to  view  those  proceedings.  You  may  proceed  in  a 
panic,  you  may  believe  that  some  legislative  act  is  necessary  here  to  stop  a 
panic,  and  you  may  vote  for  it  without  due  consideration;  but  every  vote 
cast  and  every  word  uttered  will  be  reviewed  by  our  constituencies,  not  in 
a  panic,  but  in  cool  deliberation,  and  you  will  be  held  accountable  for  what 
you  do,  whether  you  deliberate  or  not. 

It  is  said  that  history  repeats  itself,  and  it  seems  that  the  democratic 
party  is  especially  the  victim  of  repeating  history  in  some  way.  When  a 
people  intrusted  our  party  in  1884  with  the  administration  of  the  govern 
ment,  when  the  democratic  House  of  Representatives  was  chosen,  I  re 
member  full  well,  and  I  see  around  me  gentlemen  who  remember  it  as  I 
do,  for  they  were  here  at  that  time,  that  before  the  inauguration  of  the 
president  of  the  United  States  whom  we  had  elected,  the  emissaries  of 
Wall  street  swarmed  the  lobbies  of  the  House  and  this  Capitol,  just  as 
they  did  last  winter,  demanding  what?  Demanding  the  repeal  of  the  so- 
called  Bland  act. 

Precisely  the  same  proceedings  that  we  had  here  last  winter.  We 
were  told  that  it  was  the  wish  of  the  executive-elect  that  that  act  be  re 
pealed,  as  we  were  told  last  winter.  We  were  told  that  it  was  his  opinion 
and  the  opinion  of  his  advisers  that  this  country  was  coming  then  to  the 
single  silver  standard  if  we  did  not  repeal  that  law.  We  were  threatened 


326  AN    AMERICAN    COMMONER. 

with  a  panic,  with  gold  coming  to  a  premium.  That  House  was  forced 
to  a  vote  upon  that  subject  before  we  adjourned  at  that  time,  as  we  were 
practically  last  winter ;  but  it  voted  the  proposition  down  by  a  tremendous 
majority.  During  the  following  summer  the  New  York  papers,  as  they 
have  been  this  summer,  were  filled  with  predictions  of  gold  premiums  and 
panics. 

The  New  York  Herald,  one  of  their  leading  papers,  had  every  day  in 
its  columns,  "We  are  still  coining  the  7o  and  75  cent  dollars"  as  a  stand 
ing  advertisement  of  a  panic. 

Some  time  in  September  or  October,  before  the  meeting  of  Congress, 
these  generous  bankers  in  New  York,  who  say  that  they  control  the 
finances  of  this  country,  and  what  they  demand  must  be  acceded,  made 
arrangement  with  the  then  Secretary  of  the  Treasury  by  which  they  were 
to  withdraw  $10,000,000  of  subsidiary  silver  coin  and  to  place  in  the 
Treasury  of  the  United  States  $10,000,000  of  gold,  in  order  to  secure  and 
maintain  gold  payments,  advertising  to  all  the  country  that  the  bankers  of 
New  York  had  come  to  the  relief  of  the  Federal  treasury  with  $10,000- 
ooo  of  gold  to  maintain  the  public  credit. 

It  was  done,  Mr.  Speaker,  to  terrorize  the  people  of  this  country  and, 
if  possible,  to  bring  about  a  panic  such  as  you  have  to-day,  and  they  know 
it.  And  we  met  in  something  of  a  financial  panic;  not  so  severe  as  it 
is  now,  however.  The  whole  country  was  stirred  on  the  silver  question. 
We  met  in  Congress  and  the  question  was  debated.  The  result  of  it  all 
was  the  refusal  to  repeal  the  silver  law  by  over  a  two-thirds  vote  of  that 
House;  and  the  panic  vanished.  That  was  the  end  of  it.  When  they  as 
certained  that  the  free  people  of  this  country,  through  their  representa 
tives,  could  not  be  driven  as  a  herd  of  buffaloes  on  the  western  plains  into 
a  panic,  to  trample  themselves  and  those  depending  upon  them,  they 
ceased. 

The  howl  against  silver  and  the  panic  stopped.  The  country  con 
tinued  in  its  usual  prosperity,  whatever  that  may  be.  We  kept  on  coin 
ing  these  7o-cent  dollars  and  no  disturbance  was  made  of  it,  practically,  for 
four  years.  The  democratic  party  in  the  House  maintained  it  against  all 
assaults.  But  when,  unfortunately,  our  friends  on  the  other  side  got  the 
power  they  enacted  another  law,  repealing  the  law  of  i878. 

That  law,  Mr.  Speaker,  The  Sherman  law,  I  denounced  in  an  article 
in  the  North  American  Review,  about  two  months  after  it  was  enacted, 
as  a  "Janus-faced"  statute.  A  law  that  provided  for  the  purchase  of 


SPEECHES  FROM  iSjO  TO  1899.  327 

4,500,000  ounces  of  silver  bullion  per  month  on  which  treasury  notes 
should  be  issued  at  the  market  rate  of  the  purchases;  that  these  notes 
should  not  be  kept  in  circulation  in  excess  of  the  cost  price  of  the  bullion ; 
that  the  bullion  was  to  be  coined  for  the  redemption  of  the  notes,  and  that 
it  further  provided  that  in  the  discretion  of  the  Secretary  of  the  Treasury 
the  notes  should  be  redeemed  in  gold,  in  order  to  keep  a  parity  between  the 
two  metals. 

The  face  of  the  gold  part  of  it  was  turned  to  the  east — the  gold  stand 
ard;  the  other  part,  to  redeem  in  silver,  looked  to  the  west;  and  if  the 
statute  had  included  with  purchase  of  bullion  and  coining  it  into  money, 
the  redemption  of  the  notes  in  the  resulting  coin,  it  would  in  some  respects, 
at  least,  be  in  harmony  with  the  idea  of  ultimate  bimetallism.  But  I  pre 
dicted  in  that  article,  with  the  administration  then  in  power,  the  purchase 
of  silver  would  probably  go  on  and  the  law  be  executed  until  after  the  next 
presidential  election,  and  if  an  administration  hostile  to  silver  was  elected, 
gentlemen  who  gave  it  their  support  would  be  very  sick  of  their  bargain. 

Now,  Mr.  Speaker,  I  have  no  defense  to  make  of  that  law,  further 
than  this :  We  are  told  by  the  Herschell  committee  that  investigated  the 
subject  of  suspending  the  coinage  in  India  that  the  repeal  of  this  act,  the 
so-called  Sherman  act,  would  cause  a  heavy  decline  in  the  price  of  that 
metal.  I  will  send  to  the  clerk's  desk  and  have  read  the  portion  of  that 
report  I  have  marked. 

The  clerk  read  as  follows : 

Moreover  a  strong  agitation  exists  in  the  United  States  with  respect 
to  the  law  now  in  force  providing  for  the  purchase  of  silver.  Fears  have 
been  and  are  entertained  that  there  may  come  to  be  a  premium  on  gold, 
and  strong  pressure  has  been  brought  to  bear  upon  the  government  of  that 
country  with  a  view  to  bring  about  an  alteration  of  that  law. 

In  December  !ast  a  bill  was  introduced  in  the  Senate  to  repeal  the 
Sherman  act,  and  another  to  suspend  the  purchase,  under  it.  Whether 
any  such  measure  will  pass  into  law  it  is  impossible  to  foretell,  but  it  must 
be  regarded  as  possible;  and  although  in  the  light  of  past  experience  pre 
dictions  on  such  a  subject  must  be  made  with  caution,  it  is  certainly  proba 
ble  that  the  repeal  of  the  Sherman  act  would  be  followed  with  a  heavy 
fall  in  the  price  of  silver. 

MR.  BLAND:  Mr.  Speaker,  there  is  another  portion  of  that  report 
that  I  will  not  have  read  at  present,  but  it  is  to  the  same  effect.  It  predicts 
a  fall  in  the  price  of  silver  when  we  repeal  the  Sherman  act  of  probably 
six  pence  per  ounce,  and  it  is  said,  sir,  that  it  was  the  apprehension  that  the 
Government  of  the  United  States  would  suspend  the  coinage  of  silver, 
would  repeal  the  law,  that  induced  the  British  Parliament  to  recommend 


328  AN    AMERICAN    COMMONER. 

to  the  government  of  India  the  suspension  of  the  coinage  of  silver  at  the 
mints  of  India.  We  understand  that  India,  while  it  is  said  to  have  a  gov 
ernment  of  its  own,  is  simply  governed  by  a  council  of  Englishmen  ap 
pointed  for  that  purpose.  I  said  the  British  Parliament,  Mr.  Speaker, 
but  I  made  a  mistake.  The  British  Parliament  had  nothing  to  do  with  this 
measure,  and  they  are  even  now  beginning  to  criticise  it.  It  was  the 
British  council  for  India. 

Now,  sir,  we  are  asked  here  deliberately  to  repeal  this  law,  and  I 
want  to  call  the  attention  of  my  friends  on  this  side  of  the  House,  who 
proclaim  themselves  to  be  friends  of  free  coinage  at  a  reasonable  ratio — 
I  want  to  call  their  attention  to  this  point  and  to  ask  them  this  question : 
Why  do  you  gentlemen  insist  that  you  will  repeal  this  law  and  send  silver 
down  probably  fifteen  cents  an  ounce  before  you  fix  the  ratio  ?  Is  that  an  act 
friendly  to  silver  ?  Can  any  gentleman  here  face  his  free  coinage  constitu 
ency  and  defend  his  vote  subtracting  from  the  value  of  silver  fifteen  cents 
an  ounce  before  he  votes  to  fix  the  ratio  ?  I  dare  him  to  undertake  it.  He 
can  not  do  it. 

It  may  be  convenient  to  follow  the  recommendations  of  the  president, 
but  the  president  does  not  elect  the  members  of  this  house.  We  do  not  hold 
our  commissions  from  the  executive,  and  I  am  afraid  that  if  some  of  us 
undertake  to  act  here  upon  that  line,  when  our  present  commissions  ex 
pire,  we  shall  have  all  the  leisure  that  we  want  to  study  the  silver  question 
in  peace  and  quietness  at  home.  (Laughter.)  For  myself  I  feel  it  to  be 
a  conscientious  duty  to  carry  out  my  convictions  on  this  subject,  and  I  owe 
it  to  my  constituents  to  represent  what  I  believe  to  be  their  interests.  Why 
are  we  rushed  in  here  and  asked  to  repeal  the  only  law  that  sustains,  for 
the  moment,  at  least,  the  value  of  silver,  before  we  fix  the  ratio  ? 

There  is  no  consistency  in  it;  none  whatever.  The  claim  is  not  sin 
cere  that  the  president  expects  hereafter  to  recommend  bimetallism,  for  he 
does  not  do  it  in  his  message,  and  that  claim  misrepresents  his  position. 
He  recommends  the  reverse.  The  concluding  paragraph  of  the  message 
means,  if  it  means  anything,  that  after  you  shall  have  totally  demonetized 
silver  by  repealing  this  Sherman  act,  you  will  be  required  to  go  further  in 
the  same  direction ;  and  I  make  a  prediction  here  and  now,  and  my  friends, 
I  want  you  to  watch  the  proceedings  of  Congress  in  these  coming  weeks 
of  this  extra  session,  or  of  the  next  regular  session,  to  see  whether  I  am 
right  or  not. 

My  prediction  is  that  in  order  to  carry  out  the  recommendations  of 


SPEECHES    FROM     iS^O    TO     1899.  329 

that  message  we  shall  be  called  upon  to  sell  bonds  to  procure  gold.  For 
what?  To  redeem  all  our  pecuniary  obligations,  according  to  the  very 
language  of  that  message  in  that  money  which  is  recognized  by  the  prin 
cipal  nations  of  the  world.  Why  did  not  the  president  say  "gold?" 
(Laughter.)  We  know  what  his  language  means.  (Laughter.)  You 
are  asked  to  load  up  the  Federal  Treasury  with  gold,  to  redeem  every 
pecuniary  obligation  of  the  government  with  gold,  although  the  standard 
silver  dollar  is  the  identical  dollar  on  which  bond  obligations  were  based 
when  they  were  issued,  because  they  called  for  coin  of  the  standard  value 
at  the  time  of  their  issue,  and  that  was  the  standard. 

But  now,  I  repeat,  we  shall  have  to  redeem  all  this  bullion,  all  these 
Sherman  notes,  in  gold ;  we  shall  have  to  sell  bonds  to  get  gold  to  redeem 
all  our  greenbacks,  all  our  silver  certificates,  and  we  will  be  compelled  to 
carry  our  silver  dollars  as  so  much  dead  weight  of  bullion  in  the  treasury, 
so  that  we  might  as  well  dump  them  into  the  Potomac.  That  is  what  all 
this  means.  In«  other  words,  every  piece  of  paper  money  issued  in  this 
country  to-day,  every  silver  certificate,  every  greenback,  every  bond,  every 
Sherman  note,  is  to  be  redeemed  in  gold,  and  we  must  procure  the  gold 
for  their  redemption. 

What,  then,  are  you  to  do  with  your  silver  bullion,  and  with  all  your 
silver  dollars,  together  about  $500,000,000?  They  are  to  be  demon 
etized  as  a  base  metal,  and  you  know  it.  I  am  talking  to  intelligent  gen 
tlemen  who  have  read  that  message,  and  there  is  not  an  intelligent  gentle 
man  here  who  has  read  it  who  can  misunderstand  it.  Why  should  you' 
go  on,  then,  to  try  to  deceive  yourselves  and  your  constituents  on  this  sub 
ject?  There  is  no  silver  in  that  message,  and  gentlemen  on  the  other  side 
will  simply  do  themselves  and  the  subject  justice  if,  hereafter,  in  the  course 
of  their  debate,  they  will  leave  silver  out  of  it,  because  they  are  proposing 
a  measure  in  which  there  is  no  consideration  whatever  for  silver. 

Mr.  Speaker,  it  may  be  necessary,  and  probably  is,  that  I  go  somewhat 
into  the  discussion  of  the  silver  question  on  its  merits.  I  have  alluded  to 
these  preliminary  matters  which  have  been  thrown  in,  and  have  tried  to 
state  that  no  legislation  which  we  can  enact  here  is  going  to  relieve  the 
panic.  This  panic  has  been  brought  about  for  the  express  purpose  of  re 
pealing  this  law;  there  is  no  question  about  that.  We  were  threatened 
last  winter  with  a  gold  premium.  I  stated  then  on  this  floor,  and  I  state 
now,  that  there  is  no  gold  premium. 

On  the  contrary  I  believe  the  people  are  now  paying  a  premium  for 


33° 


AN    AMERICAN    COMMONER. 


silver  and  silver  certificates.  We  were  urged  that  we  must  issue  more 
bonds,  that  if  we  did  not  we  were  to  have  a  panic.  All  the  newspapers  of 
the  east  especially  were  advertising  a  panic  if  we  did  not  issue  bonds.  We 
did  not  issue  them.  The  Secretary  of  the  Treasury  was  threatened  with 
a  panic  if  he  did  not  comply  with  the  demand,  and  he  refused.  Those  who 
were  interested  in  getting  up  this  panic  began  to  refuse  loans,  to  cramp, 
to  draw  in  currency.  Many  of  the  banks  which  had  been  engaged  in 
booming  real  estate,  or  in  other  questionable  transactions,  and  were  conse 
quently  weak,  began  to  fail. 

Stocks,  called  industrial  stocks,  that  had  been  watered  in  Wall  street, 
cordage  trusts,  lead  trusts,  whisky  trusts,  railroad  stocks  that  had  been 
watered,  began  to  tumble  down  to  something  like  reasonable  rates,  and  you 
had  a  panic.  Banks  which  were  weak  began  to  fail,  and  the  people  began 
a  run  on  banks  which  were  strong.  The  whole  country  became  alarmed. 
People  began  to  take  their  money  out  of  the  banks  and  put  it  into  safe- 
deposit  vaults  or  into  their  safes  at  home.  It  is  said  theyxDUght  to  let  their 
money  remain  in  the  banks.  Well,  probably  they  ought  to  do  so;  but 
what  is  the  difference?  The  banks  are  afraid  to  let  the  money  go  out  if 
they  have  it.  Now,  the  panic  has  come;  and  those  who  conspired  to 
bring  it  about  have  got  more  than  they  bargained  for.  The  idea  is  that 
we  can  relieve  this  panic  by  the  repeal  of  the  Sherman  law. 

Why,  Mr.  Speaker,  I  say  right  here  (and  history  will  bear  me  out  in 
the  statement)  that  while  there  was  some  alarm  in  the  country  before,  yet 
the  moment  the  British  government  demonetized  silver  in  India,  then  the 
panic  began  in  earnest — not  before;  that  precipitated  this  panic  in  its 
present  shape.  We  all  understand  that.  In  this  way  desolation  was 
brought  into  many  of  the  states  of  this  Union,  and  men  who  had  before 
been  prosperous  and  happy  were  by  the  thousands  sent  as  tramps  through 
out  the  land. 

All  parts  of  the  country  have  felt  the  effects.  It  is  this  fight  upon 
silver  that  has  precipitated  this  panic;  and  the  repeal  of  the  Sherman  law 
will  only  intensify  it,  not  relieve  it.  The  panic  will  be  relieved  when 
everything  gets  so  low  that  people  see  they  can  make  money  by  buying; 
when  they  begin  to  buy  prices  will  go  up ;  and  when  everybody  is  buying 
money  will  come  from  its  hoarding  places  and  you  will  have  some  relief. 
In  no  other  way  will  relief  come. 

Gold  is  coming  to  us  to-day.  Notwithstanding  we  are  told  the  peo 
ple  across  the  water  are  afraid  to  invest  here  for  fear  that  we  will  not  pay 


SPEECHES    FROM     1870    TO     1899.  331 

in  gold,  yet  these  people  are  sustaining  prices  to-day  and  sending  here 
all  the  money  that  they  can  spare.  There  was  a  panic  in  gold-using  Aus 
tralia  that  has  bankrupted  that  whole  people  and  sent  terror  to  the  banks 
all  over  England.  We  know  that  gold  can  not  be  obtained  there  except 
by  paying  for  it ;  yet  it  is  coming  here. 

Talk  about  a  premium  on  gold;  here  is  the  treasury  of  the  United 
States  that  is  open  to  the  plunder  of  every  speculator  of  the  civilized  world. 
He  can  take  his  Sherman  note  or  his  greenback  or  any  other  government 
currency  there  and  get  gold  without  cost.  Did  you  ever  notice  the  names 
of  these  gentlemen  in  New  York  who  are  shipping  gold  abroad,  or  bring 
ing  it  back?  Every  one  of  those  names  that  I  have  seen  has  a  foreign 
termination;  every  one  of  those  gentlemen,  so  far  as  I  am  advised,  is  an 
agent  or  branch  bank  of  some  bank  across  the  water. 

If  you  go  to  the  bank  of  England  to  get  gold  for  export  you  must  pay 
a  premium  on  it ;  if  you  go  to  the  bank  of  France  to  get  gold  for  export  you 
must  pay  a  premium  on  it.  The  case  is  the  same  with  every  other  banking 
house  in  Europe ;  no  gold  can  be  obtained  there  without  paying  a  premium. 
But  here  is  the  treasury  of  the  United  States  professing  to  be  so  helpless 
that  it  can  not  prevent  every  gold  speculator  from  robbing  the  government 
of  its  gold.  Our  treasury  will  not  pay  out  the  silver  which  it  might  pay. 

The  Bank  of  France  will  pay  out  silver,  or  will  charge  a  premium  on 
gold  if  it  is  wanted  for  anything  but  domestic  use.  But  the  treasury  of 
the  United  States,  instead  of  paying  out  gold  and  silver  in  equal  quantities 
and  thus  preventing  its  gold  (if  it  is  necessary  to  preserve  it,  though  I  see 
no  necessity  of  preserving  it,  for  all  our  money  is  at  a  premium  to-day), 
lets  everybody  go  there  and  get  as  much  gold  as  he  pleases.  Why  not  pay 
out  the  silver  when  we  have  more  of  it  than  we  have  of  gold,  or  pay  out 
gold  when  we  have  more  of  it  than  of  silver,  and  thus  protect  ourselves  ? 

It  is  because  the  administration  is  hostile  to  silver ;  and  thus  it  is  sur 
rendering  this  country  to  the  Shylocks  of  the  Old  World  who  have  made 
war  upon  it.  The  aristocracy  of  western  Europe  has  absolutely  tabooed 
silver  in  those  countries;  driven  it  away  from  there.  Here  it  finds  its  only 
resting  place.  The  last  fight  for  the  white  metal  is  to  be  made  here  in  this 
country  and  in  this  house,  my  friends.  Will  you  stand  by  it  now,  or  will 
you  let  the  Shylocks  come  and  have  their  way  ?  It  is  for  you  to  determine. 

I  think,  Mr.  Speaker,  that  we  can  trust  the  people  of  this  country  on 
a  question  of  importance  as  vital  as  this.  The  question  is  now  before  us. 
This  is  its  last  resort.  Will  you  virtually  demonetize  the  money  of  nearly 


332 


AN    AMERICAN    COMMONER. 


70,000,000  of  people,  with  a  vast  empire  of  3,000,000  of  square  miles,  a 
people  thirsting  for  money  to  open  up  new  railroads,  to  establish  new  fac 
tories,  to  operate  new  places  of  business,  to  inaugurate  new  industries; 
7o,  ooo,  ooo  of  people  demanding  money,  twice  what  we  have  to-day,  a  new 
people,  a  new  country,  a  free  people,  or  they  ought  to  be  free  whether  they 
are  or  not? 

Are  you  to  give  up  the  fight  and  let  this  vast  body  of  our  wealth  go  to 
ruin?  I  do  not  believe  it.  We  know  well  enough  that  if  we  repeal  this 
law  and  give  nothing  for  it,  the  people  of  this  country  will  regard  it  as 
a  total  demonetization  of  silver,  which  it  will  be  so  far  as  this  Congress  is 
concerned,  without  any  question. 

Now,  my  friends — and  I  do  not  care  whether  you  are  democrats  or 
republicans,  or  who  you  are.  I  appeal  to  you,  especially  as  democrats — 
when  in  1890  in  nearly  every  state  of  this  Union  the  democratic  party  in 
its  platforms  demanded  free  and  unlimited  coinage  of  silver,  when  you 
embodied  it  in  your  great  Chicago  national  platform,  when  the  democratic 
party  has  for  years  stood  before  the  House  and  the  country  as  the  bulwark 
in  defense  of  the  white  metal,  in  the  face  of  all  these  things  are  you  now 
to  desert  the  cause  and  surrender  the  fight  ?  Can  you  afford  to  do  it  ?  Will 
you  go  to  your  people  and  tell  them  that  you  are  not  able  to  carry  out  the 
pledges  of  your  platform,  the  promises  upon  which  you  were  sent  here,  or 
any  part  of  it,  except  that  which  resulted  in  the  total  demonetization  of 
silver  and  the  sacrifice  of  their  interests? 

What  does  free  coinage  of  silver  mean  ?  It  means  that  the  holders  of 
silver  bullion,  at  some  ratio  to  be  fixed  in  the  bill,  may  go  to  the  mints  of 
the  government  and  have  it  struck  into  the  legal-tender  money  of  the  coun 
try  and  deposit  the  dollars  so  coined,  if  the  holder  so  desires,  and  have  a 
certificate  issued  to  him  in  place  of  it.  What  is  the  effect  of  unlimited 
coinage  of  silver  in  this  country,  and  I  invite  your  attention  to  this  partic 
ularly,  because  it  is  a  question  of  vital  importance?  It  means  that  the 
silver  coins  of  the  United  States  at  whatever  ratio  fixed — and  I  want  the 
present  ratio  that  we  have  now,  16  to  I,  maintained  precisely  as  it  is — it 
means  that  the  silver  of  the  world  can  come  here  in  exchange  for  what  we 
have  to  sell. 

Yes,  it  means  that  the  silver  of  the  whole  world  can  come  here.  But  they 
say  that  we  will  be  flooded  with  the  world's  silver,  that  it  will  be  dumped 
down  upon  us.  Now,  let  us  see  about  that  for  a  moment.  It  means  that 
anyone  with  sixteen  ounces  of  silver  can  come  here  from  any  part  of  the 


SPEECHES  FROM  1870  TO  1899.  333 

world,  or  with  one  ounce  of  gold,  and  he  can  buy  your  grain,  he  can  buy 
your  house  and  lot,  he  can  buy  your  manufactured  product,  and  buy  the 
property  and  commodities  of  all  sorts  that  you  have  to  sell  with  either  the 
one  or  the  other;  that  is  to  say,  he  can  buy  just  as  much  with  his  sixteen 
ounces  of  silver  as  with  his  one  ounce  of  gold. 

With  the  billions  upon  billions  of  property  existing  in  this  country  to 
day,  and  being  produced  in  this  country  every  year,  we  simply  offer  to  ex 
change  that  which  we  have  in  abundance  on  a  basis  of  one  pound  of  gold  as 
the  equivalent  of  sixteen  pounds  of  silver.  We  invite,  then,  the  world  to 
come  with  its  silver  and  make  the  exchange.  No  nation  now,  it  is  true, 
offers  in  exchange  for  silver  the  gold  at  any  fixed  ratio;  consequently  all 
the  silver  that  is  coined  is  used  in  the  countries  where  it  is  coined.  And 
why?  Because  no  great  power  offers  to  exchange  commodities  for  one 
metal  or  the  other  at  any  fixed  ratio.  That  is  the  trouble  with  silver  to-day. 

Now,  it  must  be  remembered  that  France  gave  an  example  to  the  world 
in  this  regard,  having  kept  its  silver  on  a  parity  with  gold  for  a  period  of 
seventy  years  on  a  ratio  of  16  1-2  to  I.  It  said  to  the  nations  of  the 
world,  "Come  with  your  gold  and  your  silver,  fifteen  and  one-half  ounces 
of  silver  or  one  of  gold,  and  you  can  buy  all  of  our  salable  property  in 
France  and  you  can  pay  us  in  silver  or  in  gold,  just  as  you  choose,  on  that 
basis."  And  according  to  the  report  of  the  British  royal  commission  of 
1888  on  that  subject,  France  was  enabled  to  maintain  the  parity  of  the  two 
metals  at  that  ratio  for  the  reason  that  she  had  property  enough  to  effect 
exchanges  on  that  basis.  We  are  in  the  same  condition. 

Wha'i.  is  it  then  that  you  are  asked  to  do  ?  It  is  that  we,  the  govern 
ment  of  the  United  States,  we  as  a  people,  say  to  all  the  world,  especially 
to  the  silver-using  people,  all  of  the  Asiatic  nations  and  the  Great  Indies, 
come  here  with  your  white  metal  if  you  choose  to  come,  and  trade  with 
us  on  the  basis  of  16  to  i  and  buy  your  commodities  from  us  at  that  ratio. 
When  you  do  that,  will  not  the  silver-using  people  of  the  world  come  to 
our  shores  to  make  their  purchases  rather  than  go  to  the  European  powers, 
where  they  demand  a  ratio  of  from  22  to  25  ?  There  can  be  no  doubt  of  the 
answer  to  that  question. 

You  at  once  undermine  and  sap  the  prosperity  of  western  Europe. 
You  will  divert  from  them  all  the  trade  of  every  silver-using  country  in 
the  world,  because  you  offer  to  sell  those  people  property  and  commodities 
here  that  are  better,  and  on  better  terms,  than  they  can  get  anywhere  else 
in  the  world.  You  say  their  silver  will  come  here.  Suppose  it  does.  It 


334 


AN    AMERICAN    COMMONER. 


will  go  back  again,  because  here  is  the  floodgate  that  is  opened  for  gold 
and  silver  to  come  and  to  go  with  the  tides  of  trade,  of  free  exchange  in 
this  the  greatest  country  the  world  ever  saw.  It  will  come  and  it  will  go, 
and  so  it  will  continue;  because  we  have  opened  up  the  mint,  we  have 
opened  a  sluice  for  the  dam  that  now  blockades  the  silver  tide. 

Do  you  suppose  England  could  stand  that  for  a  moment?  Certainly 
not.  What  has  made  the  manufacturers  in  Manchester,  England,  the 
strongest  bimetallists  in  the  world  to-day?  Simply  the  fact  that  they 
must  sell  their  commodities  in  India  for  the  India  rupee.  They  are  thus 
interested  in  the  value  of  that  silver  rupee.  They  want  to  maintain  it ;  and 
if  all  the  manufactured  products  of  western  Europe  that  are  sent  here  and 
sold  to  us  are  sold  for  silver,  as  they  must  be,  or  gold  at  our  ratio,  do  you 
not  see  how  quickly  you  will  convert  them  all  to  bimetallism?  Thus  you 
will  segregate  all  the  industrial  inhabitants  of  western  Europe  from  those 
who  live  on  fixed  incomes,  the  aristocracy,  the  bondholders,  and  the 
coupon  clippers.  That  is  all  there  is  about  it,  and  we  want  to  segregate 
them. 

You  see,  then,  that  when  we  do  this  in  this  country  western  Europe 
must  come  to  our  standard  or  abandon  commerce  with  all  silver-using 
countries,  and  with  us.  Mark  that.  We  are  the  best  market  in  the  world 
for  manufactured  European  products.  They  can  not  live  without  this 
market,  and  they  can  not  keep  this  market  unless  they  recognize  and  take 
our  silver  at  the  same  value  that  we  take  it ;  and  they  know  it. 

I  know  that  the  gold  owners  in  that  country  and  this,  the  bondholders 
and  bankers,  those  who  are  living  on  fixed  incomes,  and  who  are  living  on 
interest,  and  whose  business  it  is  to  loan  money  and  to  have  that  money  in 
crease  in  value  from  year  to  year — they  fight  this  proposition  as  a  matter 
of  course;  but  I  do  not  think  they  ought  to  do  it,  for  ultimately  I  think 
they  would  be  benefited,  as  would  the  industrial  people  of  the  world.  They 
ought  not  to  fight  it.  They  know  what  I  state  is  true,  that  if  this  country 
gives  free  coinage  of  gold  and  silver  at  a  fair  ratio  it  settles  the  question 
for  the  world  and  drives  the  world  to  bimetallism  instead  of  gold  mono 
metallism.  They  know  that,  and  hence  their  eagerness  and  determination 
to  prevent  it. 

It  is  a  fight  between  the  standards ;  and  this  great  country  must  settle 
it,  and  you,  my  friends,  must  think  about  settling  it  here.  It  is  a  serious 
question.  It  is  not  only  a  serious  question  for  the  American  people,  but  we 
are  appealed  to  by  the  oppressed  in  the  Old  World,  those  who  have  not  the 


SPEECHES  FROM  1870  TO  1899.  335 

voice  that  our  people  in.  their  sovereignty  have. 

The  oppressed  of  the  Old  World  are  appealing  to  us  to  settle  for  the 
world  this  great  question,  and  to  settle  it  not  for  men  who  are  seeking  ad 
vantages  in  the  stock  markets,  not  for  men  who  are  seeking  advantages  in 
bondholding,  in  interest  drawing,  in  money  lending,  in  seeking  to  have 
money  increase  in  value  every  day  and  every  year,  but  for  the  great  toiling 
and  producing  masses  of  the  other  countries  as  well  as  our  own,  for  whom 
it  is  our  proud  province  here  to  think  about  and  to  legislate.  They  are  in 
a  panic,  my  friends.  I  want  to  remind  you  of  that,  and  they  will  remind 
you  of  it  when  you  go  home  if  you  are  not  reminded  of  it  now. 

The  people  are  watching  this  thing.  They  understand  that  the  battle 
to  be  fought  here  is  the  battle  of  the  standards  the  world  over,  and  the  man 
who  fails  now  they  will  brand  as  a  traitor  to  the  cause  which  is  intrusted 
to  his  hands. 

Now,  Mr.  Speaker,  in  this  line  of  my  remarks  I  wish  to  have  read 
from  the  clerk's  desk  an  extract  from  the  parliamentary  report  to  which 
I  have  referred. 

The  clerk  read  as  follows : 

191.  The  explanation  commonly  offered  of  these  constant  variations 
in  the  silver  market  is  that  the  rise  or  depression  of  the  price  of  silver  de 
pends  upon  the  briskness  or  slackness  of  the  demand  for  the  purpose  of 
remittance  to  silver-using  countries,  and  that  the  price  is  largely  affected  by 
the  amount  of  the  bills  sold  from  time  to  time  by  the  secretary  of  state  for 
India  in  council. 

But  these  causes  were,  as  far  as  can  be  seen,  operating  prior  to  1873, 
as  well  as  subsequent  to  that  date,  and  yet  the  silver  market  did  not  display 
the  sensitiveness  to  these  influences  from  day  to  day  and  month  to  month 
which  it  now  does. 

192.  These  considerations  seem  to  suggest  the  existence  of  some 
steadying  influence  in  former  periods,  which  has  now  been  removed,  and 
which  has  left  the  silver  market  subject  to  the  free  influence  of  causes,  the 
full  effect  of  which  was  previously  kept  in  check. 

The  question  therefore  forces  itself  upon  us :  Is  there  any  other  cir 
cumstance  calculated  to  affect  the  relation  of  silver  to  gold  which  distin 
guishes  the  later  period  from  the  earlier  ? 

Now,  undoubtedly,  the  date  which  forms  the  dividing  line  between 
an  epoch  of  approximate  fixity  in  the  relative  value  of  gold  and  silver  and 
one  of  marked  instability,  is  the  year  when  the  bimetallic  system  which  had 
previously  been  in  force  in  the  Latin  Union  ceased  to  be  in  full  operation ; 
and  we  are  irresistibly  led  to  the  conclusion  that  the  operation  of  that  sys 
tem,  established  as  it  was  in  countries  the  population  and  commerce  of 
which  were  considerable,  exerted  a  material  influence  upon  the  relative 
value  of  the  two  metals. 

So  long  as  that  system  was  in  force  we  think  that,  notwithstanding  the 


336  AN    AMERICAN    COMMONER. 

changes  in  the  production  and  use  of  the  precious  metals,  it  kept  the  mar 
ket  price  of  silver  approximately  steady  at  the  ratio  by  law  between  them, 
namely,  15  1-2  to  i. 

When  once  the  conclusion  is  arrived  at  that  this  was  the  case,  the  cir 
cumstances  on  which  we  have  dwelt  as  characterizing  the  period  since 
1873  appear  amply  sufficient  to  account  for  the  fall  in  the  price  of  silver, 
tending  as  they  all  do  in  that  direction ;  and  the  fact  that  on  any  particular 
day  the  supply  of  silver  and  of  council  bills  may  be  large  while  the  need  of 
remittance  is  small,  and  vice  versa,  would  explain  the  constant  fluctuations 
in  the  price  of  silver  which  have  manifested  themselves  in  recent  years. 

193.  Now  does  it  appear  to  us  a  priori  unreasonable  to  suppose  that 
the  existence  in  the  Latin  Union  of  a  bimetallic  system  with  a  ratio  of 
15  1-2  to  i  fixed  between  the  two  metals  should  have  been  capable  of  keep 
ing  the  market  price  of  silver  steady  at  approximately  that  ratio. 

The  view  that  it  could  only  affect  the  market  price  to  the  extent  to 
which  there  was  a  demand  for  it  for  currency  purposes  in  the  Latin  Union, 
or  to  which  it  was  actually  taken  to  the  mints  of  those  countries,  is,  we 
think,  fallacious. 

The  fact  that  the  owner  of  silver  could,  in  the  last  resort,  take  it  to 
those  mints  and  have  it  converted  into  coin  which  would  purchase  com 
modities  at  the  ratio  of  15  1-2  of  silver  to  i  of  gold,  would  in  our  opinion, 
be  likely  to  affect  the  price  of  silver  in  the  market  generally,  w1  ever  the 
purchaser  and  for  whatever  country  it  was  destined.  It  would  ble  the 
seller  to  stand  out  for  a  price  approximating  to  the  legal  ratio  vvould 
tend  to  keep  the  market  steady  at  about  that  point. 

194.  It  has  been  urged  that  during  the  earlier  of  the  two  periods 
which  we  have  been  contrasting,  the  conditions  which  existed  from  time 
to  time  were  favorable  to  the  maintenance  of  the  legal  ratio ;  that  the  great 
influx  of  gold  towards  the  middle  of  this  century  found  France  with  a 
large  stock  of  silver,  and  that  this  silver,  owing  to  exceptional  circum 
stances,  had  a  ready  outlet  to  India. 

But  we  do  not  think  this  affords  an  adequate  solution  of  the  problem 
without  taking  into  account  the  existence  of  the  bimetallic  system.  It 
may  be  true  that  the  circumstances  referred  to  were  conditions  which 
helped  to  make  the  bimetallic  system  operative.  But  as  we  have  observed 
before,  circumstances  and  conditions  of  a  like  nature  have  been  more  or  less 
operative  both  before  and  since  1873,  and  yet  the  effect  on  the  relative  value 
of  the  two  metals  has  been  very  different. 

195.  It  is  said  that  the  altered  circumstances  since  1873  would  have 
rendered  it  impossible  to  maintain  silver  at  the  former  ratio,  even  if  the 
Latin  Union  had  not  abandoned  the  free  mintage  of  silver,  and  that  sooner 
or  later  the  bimetallic  system  must  have  broken  down  and  its  steadying 
influence  have  ceased. 

To  estimate  the  force  of  causes  without  adequate  experience  of  their 
effects  in  the  past  is  a  matter  of  extreme  difficulty.  But  even  if  it  were 
true  that  the  Latin  Union  would  not  have  been  able  down  to  the  present 
time  to  preserve  silver  from  falling  below  the  legal  ratio,  this  does  not 
prove  that  the  views  which  we  have  propounded  as  to  the  causes  of  the 
former  stability  of  the  gold  price  of  silver  and  of  its  present  unstable  con- 


HIS  FAVORITE  CHAIR  AND  CORNER. 


BLAND  AVENUE,  LEBANON,  MO. 


SPEECHES    FROM    1870    TO     1899.  337 

V 

dition,  are  incorrect. 

Whether  silver  would  ultimately  have  fallen  to  its  present  price,  and 
whether  the  Latin  Union  could  now,  by  reversing  its  action  and  reopening 
its  mints,  restore  silver  to  its  former  gold  value,  and  reestablish  the  former 
condition  of  stability,  are  questions  very  material  to  another  part  of  the 
case,  but  the  determination  of  which  is  not  essential  to  the  particular  point 
with  which  we  are  now  dealing*. 

MR.  CULBERSON  :  Mr.  Speaker,  as  the  time  of  the  gentleman  from 
Missouri  is  about  to  expire,  I  ask  unanimous  consent  that  he  may  be  allow 
ed  to  use  such  time  as  is  necessary  in  order  to  complete  his  argument. 

The  SPEAKER  pro  tempore  (MR.  OUTHWAITE  in  the  chair)  :  The 
gentleman  from  Texas  asks  unanimous  consent  that  the  gentleman  from 
Missouri  have  time  as  he  desires  in  which  to  complete  his  arguments.  Is 
there  objection?  (After  a  pause.)  The  chair  hears  none  and  it  so  order 
ed. 

MR.  BLAND:  Mr.  Speaker,  I  thank  the  gentleman  from  Texas  and 
the  house  for  the  courtesy. 

If  the  gentlemen  have  given  attention  to  the  statement  just  read,  I 
think  they  will  attach  all  the  importance  to  it  that  it  deserves,  especially  as 
I  say  that  it  has  been  promulgated  by  twelve  experts  appointed  by  the  Brit 
ish  parliament,  one-half  of  whom  were  gold  monometallists  and  among  the 
ablest  financiers  of  Europe,  and  I  desire  to  read  a  brief  extract  when  the 
document  is  returned  to  me. 

But  I  want  to  call  attention  to  the  principle  they  state.  They  admit 
that  France  was  enabled  to  maintain  silver  on  a  parity  with  gold  at  the  ratio 
of  15-2  to  i.  They  admit  it,  state  it,  and  give  the  reason  why.  It  is  ad 
mitted  by  Herschell,  the  gentleman  who  was  chairman  of  this  committee 
that  secured  the  demonetization  of  silver  in  India,  and  it  is  also  admitted 
by  Goschen  both  of  whom  are  monometallists. 

Now,  what  was  the  principle  laid  down  ?  They  say  in  so  many  words 
that  France  had  fixed  the  ratio  of  15  1-2  to  I  and  that  France  had  told  the 
nations  if  the  world  "you  can  come  here  with  your  gold  and  your  silver 
and  you  can  buy  all  that  France  has,  and  you  can  buy  as  much  for  fifteen 
and  one-half  ounces  of  silver  as  you  can  with  one  ounce  of  gold."  France 
was  able  to  do  that  because  it  was  an  important  country.  The  report  cites 
the  Latin  Union,  but  we  all  know  that  France  is  substantially  the  Latin 
Union. 

It  was  because  it  was  a  country  of  sufficient  power  to  make  those  ex 
changes  by  which  it  could  keep  the  parity  between  gold  and  silver  the 

22 


338 


AN    AMERICAN    COMMONER. 


world  over ;  because  the  world  could  come  there  and  exchange  it  for  prop 
erty  at  that  rate;  and  why?  Why,  they  say  no  matter  where  anyone  had 
silver  bullion,  wherever  it  be  in  the  world,  the  owner  would  not  take  any 
less  at  that  spot  for  it  than  he  could  get  in  France,  less  the  cost  of  trans 
portation,  and  he  could  hold  it  for  that  value. 

Now,  we  frequently  hear  it  said  that  if  we  adopt  a  ratio  of  16  to  i  and 
coin  silver  it  will  have  no  effect  except  in  this  country ;  but  if  it  is  coined 
at  that  ratio  it  will  affect  silver  everywhere,  because  the  world  would  know 
that  they  could  take  it  at  that  rate  and  get  that  amount  for  it  in  the  United 
States.  Now,  I  will  read  from  the  report  of  that  commission: 

The  fact  that  the  owner  of  silver  could  in  the  last  resort  take  it  to  those 
mints  and  have  it  converted  into  coin  which  would  purchase  commodities 
at  the  ratio  of  15  1-2  silver  to  I  of  gold  would,  in  our  opinion,  be  likely  to 
affect  the  price  of  silver  in  the  market  generally,  whoever  the  purchaser 
and  for  whatever  country  it  was  destined.  It  would  enable  the  seller  to 
stand  up  for  a  price  approximating  to  the  legal  ratio  and  tend  to  keep  the 
market  steadily  about- that  point. 

Why,  the  gold  monometallists  here  tell  us  that  it  will  run  the  gold  out 
of  the  country.  Those  monometallists  whom  I  have  read  from  do  not  say 
that,  and  it  is  not  true.  They  say  you  will  exchange  commodities  for  it, 
that  you  will  buy  commodities  for  silver  and  gold  at  a  fixed  ratio:  and 
because  the  holders  of  the  silver  anywhere  in  the  world  can  come  here  with 
it  and  exchange  it  for  commodities,  silver  will  be  used  as  much  as  gold  at  a 
fixed  ratio ;  and  it  will  not  matter  whether  they  pay  in  silver  or  gold.  Then 
you  will  see  the  parity  between  gold  and  silver  restored  and  maintained  at 
this  rate.  France  did  it,  in  a  territory  not  so  large  as  the  state  represented 
on  the  floor  by  my  distinguished  friend  who  did  me  the  honor  to  have  my 
time  extended,  having  38,000,000  of  people. 

Now,  I  say,  Mr.  Speaker,  the  contention  that  we  lose  our  gold  and 
that  we  have  got  to  exchange  gold  for  silver  does  not  hold  good.  It  is 
put  on  the  broad  proposition  of  a  nation  which  produces  enough  wealth ; 
and  where  is  the  nation  under  the  shining  sun  that  compares  with  this 
growing  country  of  ours  in  population  and  increasing  development?  I 
believe  that  I  may  yet  live  to  see  this  country  with  nearly  100,000,000  in 
habitants,  increasing,  as  it  does,  at  the  rate  of  over  a  million  and  a  half  an 
nually. 

Many  now  born,  by  the  time  they  are  voters,  will  compose  part  of  a 
nation  containing  perhaps  125,000,000  of  people,  with  unsurpassed  ener 
gies,  with  a  genius  nowhere  equaled,  and  with  a  vast  territory  upon  which 


SPEECHES    FROM     iSjO    TO    1899.  339 

those  energies  and  that  genius  can  operate.  But  a  short  time  ago  when 
you  looked  across  the  Alleghany  Mountains  you  beheld  the  western  wilder 
ness  roamed  only  by  the  savage  and  the  wild  beast.  To-day  it  is  teeming 
with  its  millions  of  civilized  people,  the  great  Mississippi  Valley,  and  when 
you  cross  the  Mississippi  you  just  begin  to  enter  the  great  domain  of  this 
country  of  ours,  for  more  than  two-thirds  of  it  lies  beyond  the  Father  of 
Waters. 

And,  Mr.  Speaker,  it  is  that  two-thirds  of  our  territory,  rich  as  it  is  in 
gold  and  silver,  embedded  together  in  the  same  deposits,  in  the  same  moun 
tains,  so  that  you  can  not  extract  the  one  without  extracting  the  other — it 
is  that  portion  of  our  territory  that  would  give  us  the  money  that  we  need, 
the  money  of  the  world,  good  money,  hard  money,  democratic  money 
(laughter  and  applause) — a  country  that  the  civilized  world  must  look  to 
for  its  future  monetary  supply  if  it  is  to  continue  on  what  is  called  the  hard- 
money  basis.  And  yet  we  are  to-day  asked  to  do  what?  To  lay  the  blighting 
hand  of  confiscation  upon  the  millions  of  people  inhabiting  that  country, 
to  turn  them  out  as  tramps  upon  the  land,  merely  to  satisfy  the  greed  of 
English  gold. 

O  my  God,  shall  we  do  such  a  thing  as  that?  (Applause.)  Will 
you  crush  the  people  of  your  own  land  and  send  them  abroad  as  tramps, 
will  you  kill  and  destroy  your  own  industries,  and  especially  the  produc 
tion  of  your  precious  metals  that  ought  to  be  sent  abroad  everywhere — 
will  you  do  this  simply  to  satisfy  the  greed  of  Wall  street,  the  mere  agent  of 
Lombard  street  in  oppressing  the  people  of  Europe  and  of  this  country? 
It  can  not  be  done !  It  shall  not  be  done !  I  speak  for  the  great  masses  of 
the  Mississippi  Valley,  and  those  west  of  it,  when  I  say  you  shall  not  do  it ! 
(Applause.) 

Any  political  party  that  undertakes  to  do  it  will,  in  God's  name,  be 
trampled,  as  it  ought  to  be  trampled,  into  the  dust  of  condemnation  now 
and  in  the  future.  (Applause.)  Speaking  as  a  democrat,  all  my  life  bat 
tling  for  what  I  conceived  to  be  democracy  and  what  I  conceived  to  be 
right,  I  am  yet  an  American  above  democracy.  (Applause.)  I  do  not  in 
tend,  we  do  not  intend,  that  any  party  shall  survive,  if  we  can  help  it,  that 
will  lay  the  confiscating  hand  upon  Americans  in  the  interest  of  England 
or  of  Europe.  Now,  mark  it.  This  may  be  strong  language,  but  heed  it. 
The  people  mean  it,  and,  my  friends  of  eastern  democracy,  we  bid  farewell 
when  you  do  that  thing.  (Applause.) 

Now,  you  can  take  your  choice  of  sustaining  America  against  Eng- 


340  AN    AMERICAN    COMMONER. 

land,  American  interests,  and  American  laborers  and  producers,  or  you 
can  go  out  of  power.  We  have  come  to  the  parting  of  the  ways.  I  do  not 
pretend  to  speak  for  anybody  but  myself  and  my  constituents,  but  I  believe 
that  I  do  speak  for  the  great  masses  of  the  great  Mississippi  Valley  when  I 
say  that  we  will  not  submit  to  the  domination  of  any  political  party,  how 
ever  much  we  may  love  it,  that  lays  the  sacrificing  hand  upon  silver  and 
will  demonetize  it  in  this  country. 

For  myself  I  will  not  support  such  a  policy  here  or  elsewhere,  but  will 
denounce  it,  and  as  a  democrat  I  will  denounce  it  ao  un-democratic  and  un- 
American,  and  will  ask  the  people  of  this  country  to  condemn  it  as  they 
ought  to  have  condemned  the  so-called  democrats  engaged  in  it  as  the 
agents,  the  tools — I  withdraw  that  word,  but  I  will  say  as  the  represen 
tatives,  unintentionally,  of  the  money  power  and  the  moneyed  interests, 
and  not  of  the  masses  of  the  American  people.  (Applause.) 

Gentlemen,  you  can  not  hold  the  democratic  party  together  on  that 
line.  You  can  not  pledge  yourselves  to  bimetallism  in  your  platform  and 
ignore  it  in  your  legislation.  We  pledged  ourselves  in  the  first  place  to 
tariff  reform,  and  the  people  had  a  right  to  expect  us  to  deal  with  that 
first.  In  my  part  of  the  country  we  were  told  to  let  silver  alone ;  that  we 
already  had  a  law  on  that  subject.  They  said  to  us :  "Do  not  disturb  that 
question,  but  take  up  the  tariff;  we  are  united  on  the  tariff  (laughter  on 
the  republican  side)  ;  let  us  take  up  the  tariff  and  reform  and  reduce  it; 
the  tariff  is  doing  us  great  injury,  let  us  attend  to  that  first."  We  thought 
that  declaration  was  sincere  and  we  thought  the  first  thing  to  be  taken  up 
was  the  repeal  of  the  McKinley  bill. 

Well,  now,  my  people  of  the  Mississippi  Valley  believed  that  you 
would  let  silver  alone,  that  you  would  not  try  to  demonetize  it,  that  you 
would  let  it  stand  where  it  is ;  they  believed  the  tariff  would  be  considered 
first.  But  when  you  come  to  say  that  you  are  going  to  demonetize  silver, 
let  me  tell  you  that  this  is  a  bigger  question  than  the  tariff  or  anything  else. 
This  battle  of  the  standards  is  a  world-wide  question.  The  question  is 
whether  we  are  to  be  put  upon  a  gold  standard ;  and  that  question  is  one 
which  in  importance  is  away  beyond  the  year  by  year  regulation  of  your 
revenue. 

We  voted  the  ticket  in  good  faith;  we  expected  that  the  platform 
would  be  carried  out  as  was  promised — that  we  would  have  tariff  revision, 
and  that  when  we  came  to  the  money  question  it  would  be  regulated  ac 
cording  to  the  Chicago  platform,  that  we  should  have  the  free  coinage  of 


SPEECHES    FROM    1870    TO     1899.  341 

silver,  which  in  itself  would  destroy  this  makeshift.  But  lo  and  behold, 
we  find  that  we  were  tricked,  that  we  were  deceived.  (Laughter.)  And 
I  use  that  language  advisedly.  I  believe  it  is  not  intended  by  our  eastern 
democratic  friends  that  tariff  reform  should  be  considered  first,  but  their 
main,  if  not  their  sole,  object  was  to  put  their  hands  upon  silver  and  de 
monetize  it  and  let  tariff  reform  take  care  of  itself  afterward.  (Laugh 
ter.)  And  here  we  are,  just  in  that  situation.  Reduce  the  tariff  25  per 
cent,  yet  make  money  in  gold  25  per  cent  more  valuable,  the  tariff  remains 
as  great  a  burden  as  ever.  It  takes  the  same  quantity  of  wheat,  corn,  pork, 
and  cotton  to  pay  it  as  before. 

A  MEMBER.     That  is  where  we  are  at. 

MR.  BLAND.  Yes;  we  know  where  we  are  at  now.  Now,  I  tell  you 
I  am  not  going  to  submit  to  it.  You  may  pass  your  bill  and  do  these 
things ;  but  if  you  do  we  are  going  to  cut  loose  from  you.  You  may  go 
ahead,  but  you  will  never  trick  us  again.  I  am  speaking  for  my  people. 
Do  not  charge  me  with  being  a  radical  or  a  fanatic  or  with  indulging  in 
threats.  I  speak  the  sentiment  of  the  masses  of  the  people  I  represent,  and 
they  are  resolved  upon  the  policy  I  have  stated.  I  would  not  say  so  if  it 
were  not  true. 

Now,  Mr.  Speaker,  as  I  have  already  stated,  the  silver  question,  as 
now  presented,  is  not  the  question  we  have  had  presented  to  us  in  the  past. 
It  is  true  that  in  what  has  been  called  the  Bland  coinage  act  we  passed  in 
this  House  a  free  coinage  bill  (I  mean  not  in  this  particular  body,  but  in 
the  House  of  Representatives)  by  a  large  majority — by  a  two- thirds  vote. 
But  when  it  went  to  the  Senate  there  was  engrafted  upon  it  a  provision 
requiring  the  purchase  of  at  least  $2,000,000  worth  of  silver  each  month 
and  not  exceeding  $4,000,000  worth  and  its  coinage  into  standard  silver 
dollars.  That  was  a  bullion  purchase  bill. 

But  mark  the  distinction :  It  required  every  dollar  of  that  bullion  to 
be  coined  into  money  as  fast  as  purchased ;  and  it  required  the  issue  on  that 
money  of  certificates  redeemable  in  silver.  To  that  extent  the  measure 
was  in  the  line  of  bimetallism.  The  only  difficulty  was  the  limitation  as  to 
the  amount.  But  the  present  law  repealed  that  law.  You  do  not  propose 
now  to  put  us  back  to  where  we  were  when  you  repealed  that  act,  which 
was  adopted  as  a  compromise  measure  providing  for  the  purchase  of  from 
two  million  to  four  million  dollars  worth  of  silver  per  month. 

You  propose  to  wipe  out  the  act  of  repeal  and  to  leave  us  where? 
You  propose  to  remit  us  to  the  demonetizing  act  of  1873,  which  in  all  my 


342  AN    AMERICAN    COMMONER. 

section  of  country  the  democratic  party  on  every  stump  has  denounced  as 
the  monumental  fraud  of  the  nineteenth  century.  Here  is  a  democratic 
House  proposing  to  go  right  back  to  that  act.  When  you  do  so  you  will  be 
guilty  of  a  greater  fraud  than  that  act  itself.  I  speak  advisedly  when  I 
say  that  if  the  democratic  party,  after  all  the  pledges  it  has  made  in  regard 
to  silver  in  its  platforms,  national  and  state,  should  take  the  country  back 
to  its  condition  under  the  act  of  1873,  you  will  have  consummated  the 
monumental  fraud  of  the  nineteenth  century,  because  we  never  expected 
much  from  Mr.  Sherman  or  his  party;  they  never  made  many  promises, 
as  we  have. 

If  we  now  violate  in  the  light  of  day  every  pledge  that  we  have  made, 
we  shall  be  convicted  of  insincerity,  of  betraying  the  people  who  sent  us 
here,  of  bowing  our  necks  meekly  to  the  yoke  of  Wall  street.  If  democ 
racy  means  anything,  it  is  that  those  who  come  here  from  the  people  to 
represent  them  should  carry  out  their  pledges  in  good  faith.  It  does  not 
mean  that  we  are  to  pass  an  act  which  (though  some  people  say  it  will  stop 
the  panic)  will  put  a  yoke  upon  your  constituencies  for  probably  cen 
turies  to  come. 

I  spoke  of  the  British  royal  commission  as  having  laid  down  the  prin 
ciples  by  which  bimetallism  was  maintained  in  France;  and  I  contend  that 
this  government  can  maintain  it  upon  the  same  principles,  and  at  the  ratio 
of  16  to  i.  Yet  the  house  will  have  the  opportunity  to  vote  on  different 
ratios.  My  objection  to  changing  the  ratio  is,  in  the  first  place,  that  the 
ratio  of  16  to  I  is  that  which  now  exists.  It  is  the  ratio  of  the  standard 
silver  dollar,  which  is  still  the  standard  silver  dollar  that  it  always  was.  It 
is  the  law  of  the  land  and  basis  of  equities  between  debtor  and  creditor. 

Some  gentlemen  say  that  gold  is  the  unit  of  value  and  the  standard. 
What  was  meant  by  the  unit  of  value  was  simply  that  the  dollar  was  the 
unit  of  account  from  which  we  should  reckon  both  down  and  up — down 
into  fractions  and  up  into  multiples.  It  was  merely  the  unit  of  account 
for  government  accounts  and  private  debts  and  everything  computed  in 
dollars  and  cents.  That  is  what  it  meant.  And  that  unit  was  to  be  coined 
in  silver.  That  was  the  original  act.  Whether  the  unit  of  value  as  it  ap 
peared  in  the  act  of  1873  was  intended  to  mean  anything  more  than  the 
unit  of  account,  I  do  not  care.  If  it  was,  then,  according  to  that  construc 
tion,  the  silver  dollar  was  the  unit  of  value  until  1873. 

It  was  the  only  dollar  authorized  and  coined  until  1849,  when  the  gold 
dollar  was  authorized  to  be  coined.  But  the  silver  dollar  was  the  unit. 


SPEECHES  FROM  iSjO  TO  1899.  343 

Now,  in  the  act  of  i878,  the  title  reads  "An  act  for  the  coinage  of  the  stan 
dard  silver  dollar  and  to  restore  its  legal-tender  character."  The  context 
refers  to  the  act  of  1837,  and  the  coining  of  the  dollar  authorized  there 
with  the  same  superscription,  which  is  the  same  standard  dollar,  the  silver 
dollar,  that  has  been  identically  the  same  in  all  of  the  history  of  our 
country.  That  act  restored  that  standard  as  the  standard  dollar,  and  dis 
placed  the  gold  dollar. 

There  is  no  question  about  that.  We  do  not  coin  the  gold  dollar  at 
all  to-day.  It  is  prohibited  to  be  done  by  the  mints,  and  the  only  dollar 
that  is  coined  is  the  silver  dollar ;  and  I  repeat  sir,  I  deny  that  the  gold  dol 
lar  is  the  standard  of  value.  When  we  resumed  specie  payments  and  came 
from  the  midst  of  the  greenback  circulation  to  coin  payments,  we  emerged 
with  a  standard  silver  dollar  coined  at  the  mints,  and  had  been  for  nearly 
a  year.  In  all  of  our  business  obligations,  in  all  of  our  contracts  since  the 
resumption  o'f  specie  payments,  we  refer  to  the  standard  silver  dollar. 
We  have  been  coining  them,  and  our  contracts  rest  on  silver  as  well  as  on 
gold.  But  you  want  to  eliminate  them  altogether  and  put  everything  on 
a  gold  basis. 

But  I  repeat,  sir,  I  deny  the  assumption  that  the  gold  dollar  is  the  stan 
dard.  I  assert  that  the  silver  dollar  is  now,  as  it  has  always  been,  the  unit 
of  value  in  this  country,  and  therefore  that  the  unlimited  coinage  of  silver 
will  place  bullion  silver  at  par  at  the  mints  and  in  the  world's  markets 
equally  with  gold,  according  to  the  Chicago  platform.  It  must  necessarily 
do  it,  and  we  will  comply  with  the  platform  and  its  pledges  by  coining  our 
silver  at  a  ratio  of  16  to  i.  For  you  must  take  notice  that  all  of  the  silver 
in  circulation  in  the  world  to-day,  coined  with  reference  to  any  ratio  to 
gold,  is  about  15  1-2,  or  below  that  amount.  Four  billions  of  silver  money 
is  in  circulation  at  a  coinage  ratio  of  about  15  1-2,  while  ours  is  16  to  I. 
We  have  departed  so  far  from  the  coinage  ratio  of  the  world  as  to  go 
above  15  1-2.  But  why  ?  What  reason  is  there  for  going  above  16  to  I. 

I  say,  sir,  and  the  statistics  will  demonstrate  the  fact,  that  if  you  go 
back  for  the  last  twenty  years  and  compare  the  production  of  gold  with 
that  of  silver,  that  the  ratio  of  production  will  be  found  to  be  about  15  1-2 
or  between  that  and  16  to  I.  Of  course  within  the  last  four  or  five  years 
the  production  of  silver  has  increased,  but  you  must  take,  in  making  com 
parisons  of  this  character,  long  periods  and  not  a  few  years  Take,  then,  for 
this  purpose  the  production  of  silver  for  the  last  twenty  years  or  since  the 
price  of  silver  has  begun  to  fall,  and  the  comparative  production  of  the 


344  AN    AMERICAN    COMMONER. 

two  metals  is  about  15  1-2,  or  something  below  16,  to  i. 

There  is,  then,  no  reason  why  we  should  change  the  existing  ratio, 
except  we  admit  in  order  to  change  the  ratio  that  restoring  silver  to  its 
proper  and  legitimate  function  will  not  restore  its  value. 

MR.  JOHNSON  of  North  Dakota :  Will  the  gentleman  allow  me  to  ask 
him  a  question  ? 

MR.  BLAND:     Yes. 

MR.  JOHNSON  of  North  Dakota :  Can  the  gentleman  name  any  coun 
try  of  the  world,  where  they  have  free  coinage  to-day,  where  the  coin  is 
not  debased  exactly  to  the  bullion  value? 

MR.  BLAND  :     I  do  not  understand  the  gentleman's  question. 

MR.  JOHNSON  of  North  Dakota:  I  say  ban  the  gentleman  name  any 
country  with  free  coinage  where  the  coin  and  bullion  are  not  exactly  of 
the  same  value,  and  that  the  bullion  value  of  that  country  is  just  the  coin 
value  ? 

MR.  BLAND  :  There  is  no  country  I  know  of  to-day  where  gold  and 
silver  are  coined  at  any  fixed  ratio  free.  I  am  not  going  on  the  hypothesis 
that  Mexico  or  some  weak  country  like  that  can,  by  any  of  its  enactments, 
have  any  material  effect  upon  the  question. 

I  am  speaking  of  a  system  for  this  country  where  it  is  proposed  to  coin 
the  two  metals  at  a  fixed  ratio,  or  of  a  country  which,  in  the  language  of 
this  report  of  the  British  commission,  is  of  "sufficient  importance  to  be 
considered,"  where  it  has  property  and  products  and  commerce  enough  to 
make  exchanges,  and  that  country  was  France.  I  am  not  taking  a  little 
country  like  Mexico,  that  has  no  fixed  relation  between  the  metals,  or  even 
India.  I  speak  of  bimetallism,  having  a  fixed  ratio,  and  where  the  country 
is  strong  enough  in  its  products  to  say  we  will  give  as  much  in  exchange 
for  sixteen  ounces  of  silver  as  for  one  ounce  of  gold.  This  can  not  be  made 
to  apply  to  single-standard  countries.  I  am  speaking  of  bimetallism,  or 
where  a  nation  of  sufficient  commerce  fixes  a  ratio  of  exchange  for  the  two 
metals  with  free  coinage  for  both. 

MR.  JOHNSON  of  North  Dakota :     Can  you  name  such  a  nation  now  ? 

MR.  BLAND:  I  say  that  this  royal  commission,  whose  report  I  read 
awhile  ago,  admitted  that  France  did  it  for  some  seventy  years. 

MR.  JOHNSON  of  North  Dakota :  Any  country  could  have  done  it  then, 
but  no  country  has  done  it  for  the  last  twenty  years. 

MR.  BLAND  :  No  country  has  been  trying  to  do  it  for  the  last  twenty 
years,  and  I  want  this  country  to  try  it.  (Applause.) 


SPEECHES    FROM    1870    TO     1899.  345 

Here  is  a  country  which,  in  the  direction  of  its  resources,  is  larger 
to  day  than  France,  England  and  Germany  thrown  together.  I  say  that 
advisedly.  I  do  not  mean  that  it  is  larger  in  population,  for  we  have  not 
got  the  population.  I  do  not  mean  greater  in  its  visible  wealth,  for  we  have 
not  that;  but  I  do  mean  in  our  resources  to  be  developed,  in  our  demands 
for  money  as  a  new  people.  They  are  old  and  effete  and  worn  out,  and 
doomed  to  particular  habits. 

We  are  progressing  and  demanding  money  every  day.  Every  new 
factory  that  is  started  in  this  country  is  a  direct  demand  upon  the  mone 
tary  supply,  and  a  contraction  of  the  currency  to  that  extent.  Every  rail 
road  that  is  built  is  a  demand  upon  your  volume  of  money  and  a  contraction 
of  the  currency  to  that  extent,  as  compared  to  everything  else.  Every 
farm  that  is  opened  is  a  new  demand  for  money,  and  a  contraction  of  the 
volume  of  currency;  and  here  we  are  opening  up  vast  territories,  and  we 
ought  to  open  up  more  still.  All  these  things  demand  money  and  must 
draw  upon  the  present  supply,  and  to  that  extent  the  currency  is  contracted, 
as  compared  to  everything  else. 

Now,  you  can  not  do  business  on  a  contracted  currency  in  this  coun 
try.  So  that  I  say  we  are  not  to  be  compared  with  those  people;  and 
when  you  compare  us,  in  the  way  of  new  demands,  new  developments,  in 
population  to  be  increased,  we  are  greater  than  all  of  them  combined; 
and  when  a  gentleman  admits  that  France  and  England  and  Germany,  or 
two  of  them  or  all  of  them,  could  fix  the  ratio,  they  admit  that  this  country 
can  do  more  than  all  of  them  together.  (Applause.)  There  is  no  ques 
tion  about  that.  You  admit  all  the  argument  there  is  in  it  when  you  admit 
that  much ;  and  here  is  a  commission  composed  of  the  most  eminent  experts 
of  the  Old  World,  a  gold  commission,  which  admits  that  France  did  this 
thing,  and  practically  admits  that  France  could  still  do  it  if  she  wanted  to. 

We  have  been  befogged  upon  this  subject.  We  have  been  misled  and 
misrepresented.  It  is  difficult  to  get  a  silver  argument  into  the  subsi 
dized  press  of  this  country,  and  it  seems  that  nearly  all  the  metropolitan 
papers  are  included  in  that  term.  They  will  talk  about  nothing  but  banks 
and  bonds  and  gold,  and  they  control  practically  the  press;  but  the  great 
argument  is  to  come  at  last,  and  will  come  unless  you  settle  it  here.  It  will 
not  stop,  but  it  will  be  settled. 

But  if  you  say  we  are  not  able  to  fix  the  ratio  at  16  to  I,  we  have 
offered  other  propositions.  I  have  stated  that  I  will  not  vote  against  a  free- 
coinage  bill  because  the  house  may  fix  a  ratio  that  I  do  not  like.  I  do  be- 


346  AN    AMERICAN    COMMONER. 

lieve,  and  I  admit  the  proposition,  that  the  fixing  of  the  ratio  is  a  fair  ques 
tion  for  discussion  and  debate;  but  I  do  assert  that,  as  a  constitutional 
question,  free  coinage  is  enjoined  by  the  constitution,  notwithstanding  the 
learned  argument  of  the  gentleman  from  Maryland  (Mr.  Rayner)  to  the 
contrary.  (Laughter.)  The  constitution  inhibits  any  state  in  this  Union 
from  making  anything  a  legal  tender  except  gold  and  silver,  and  it  confers 
upon  congress  the  sole  power  to  coin  money  and  regulate  its  value. 

Now,  does  that  mean  that  a  state  shall  make  nothing  a  legal  tender, 
and  that  congress  will  refuse  to  make  anything  a  legal  tender?  If  the 
states  have  conferred  a  power  upon  congress,  the  exercise  of  which  is  nec 
essary  to  the  life  of  the  states,  I  say  it  is  treason  to  the  states  to  deny 
that  right  as  a  legal  proposition.  The  states  have  given  up  the  power  to 
coin  money  and  to  make  legal  tender,  and  have  conferred  that  power  upon 
congress.  If  congress  refuses  to  exercise  this  power  which  is  necessary 
to  the  very  existence  of  the  state,  it  is,  so  to  speak,  disunion.  We  ought  to 
give  back,  then,  to  the  states  the  power  to  coin  money  and  regulate  its  value 
and  to  make  it  legal  tender. 

Now,  Mr.  Speaker,  here  we  are.  No  state  in  this  Union  can  coin 
money  or  make  anything  a  legal  tender  except  gold  and  silver.  We  are 
denying  to  them  a  privilege  conferred  by  the  constitution  of  this  country, 
which  says  they  may  make  gold  and  silver  a  legal  tender.  Yet  we  will 
not  coin  it,  will  not  conform  to  the  constitution  and  do  our  duty.  Not  only 
that,  but  "coin  money"  means  an  automatic  supply.  One  of  the  arguments 
that  you  can  adduce  in  favor  of  coin  money  in  place  of  paper  money  is  that 
coin  money  can  be  over-issued,  and  that  is  the  most  important  distinc 
tion. 

Another  argument  is  that  it  is  not  so  easily  burned  up.  The  metals 
are  not  so  easily  destroyed.  Many  other  qualities  pertain  to  it  which  it  is 
not  necessary  to  explain ;  but  the  great  thought  underlying  all  is  that  the 
supply  of  gold  and  silver  is  limited  by  nature,  that  contracts  are  based 
upon  the  stock  on  hand,  accumulated  for  ages,  as  the  world  has  grown  up 
in  business ;  that  the  values  of  contracts  are  fixed  by  the  money  of  the  world 
thus  accumulated,  and  that  the  annual  supply  is  so  small  in  amount  com 
pared  with  the  vast  stock  on  hand — hardly  one  per  cent  a  year — that  you 
can  not  impair  the  equity  of  contracts  by  largely  inflating  the  volume  of 
money,  nor  very  seriously  disturb  property  values,  by  lowering  the  value  of 
the  money  by  a  large  supply. 

But  here  we  want  to  interfere  with  that  automatic  supply.     When  we 


SPEECHES    FROM     iSjO    TO     1899.  347 

have  free  coinage  and  the  mints  open,  the  production  of  gold  and  silver 
supplies  the  volume  in  the  manner  I  have  stated;  for  you  make  all  the 
stocks  of  gold  and  silver  on  hand  and  all  that  comes  in  the  future  a  part  of 
the  possible  monetary  supply.  Nature  limits  the  supply,  so  that  we  can 
not  over-issue  it  if  we  want  to.  Very  good;  but  some  wise  people  about 
twenty  years  ago  thought  that  this  continuing  supply  of  gold  and  silver 
was  interfering  with  those  holding  bonds  and  drawing  interest,  and  living 
on  fixed  incomes.  They  thought  the  production  of  silver  was  going  to  be 
largely  increased,  and  would  probably  lower  the  value  of  both  gold  and 
silver  as  money,  and  hence  they  undertook  by  legislation  to  prevent  the 
automatic  supply  of  money  and  to  inhibit  the  coinage  of  one  of  the  precious 
metals  in  order  to  protect  the  volume  of  money  from  that  increase. 

Now  we  had  better  be  on  a  paper  system  than  on  a  system  like  that. 
If  we  are  to  regulate  the  volume  of  money  by  prohibiting  the  coinage  of 
one  of  the  metals,  why  not  abandon  the  metals  altogether  and  go  to  paper 
at  once?  We  are  asked  to  believe  that  the  contention  is  true  that  we  do 
not  need  much  money  anyhow,  because  ninety  per  cent  of  the  business  of 
the  world  is  done  on  credit.  Why  not  one  hundred  per  cent  and  get  rid  of 
money  altogether? 

The  time  has  come,  my  friends,  when  credit  goes  very  slow  and  a 
little  money  very  much  faster.  There  is  always  a  day  of  liquidation,  and 
you  must  have  the  money.  But,  as  I  said  before,  if  ninety  per  cent  is  credit 
money,  why  not  one  hundred  per  cent  ?  Let  us  print  credit  money,  but  let 
that  money  rest  upon  the  credit  of  the  government  and  not  upon  the  credit 
of  some  bankers  in  London  or  Wall  street.  There  is  about  ninety  per  cent 
of  the  American  people  who  do  not  know  anything  about  credit.  They  have 
to  do  their  business  on  a  cash  basis.  They  must  have  money. 

The  concluding  part  of  our  bill  provides  that  the  dollar  coined,  what 
ever  it  may  be,  may  be  deposited  and  a  silver  certificate  issued  on  it,  as 
now  provided  by  law:  so  that  if  you  reach  a  ratio  of  18,  19,  or  20  to  I,  you 
still  have  the  same  right  to  a  certificate  that  you  have  to-day. 

Now,  Mr.  Speaker,  in  closing  this  argument — and  as  stated,  an  argu 
ment  entirely  without  preparation,  not  expecting  that  I  would  speak  to  it 
at  all  to-day — I  wish  to  say  that  the  time  has  come  when  we  will  have  to 
decide  whether  or  not  this  country  is  to  come  to  monometallism  or  bimet 
allism.  I  think  it  is  the  duty  of  this  House,  and  especially  of  my  associ 
ates,  to  settle  this  money  question,  and  to  settle  it  on  the  lines  I  have 
pointed  out,  not  by  piecemeal,  and  not  by  a  repeal  of  an  act  that  sustains 


348  AN    AMERICAN    COMMONER. 

the  value  of  silver,  before  fixing  the  ratio,  not  to  demonetize  silver  and  then 
undertake  to  restore  it  afterwards ;  but  we  have  time  now  to  arrange,  ac 
cording  to  the  principles  of  bimetallism,  a  measure  in  conformity  with  our 
promise  to  the  American  people ;  and  we  ask  our  friends  on  the  other  side 
of  this  question — our  democratic  friends  on  this  side,  who  are  so  eager  to 
get  rid  of  the  Sherman  law,  so-called,  which  I  do  not  defend  upon  any 
other  principle  than  that  it  is  the  only  law  which  sustains  silver  until  we 
can  fix  the  ratio — I  ask  them  to  come  in  all  fairness  and  enable  us  to  carry 
out  our  pledges  to  restore  bimetallism  to  this  country.  If  you  do  not, 
yours  is  the  responsibility,  not  ours. 


GOVERNMENT    BY    INJUNCTION  AS  A  MODE  OF 
IMPERIALISM. 

(Delivered  in  the  House  of  Representatives,  July  16,  1894,  Against  a  Resolution  En 
dorsing  the  Cleveland  Administration.) 

MR.  SPEAKER:  It  is  to  be  regretted  that  a  resolution  of  this  char 
acter  should  be  thrust  here  under  a  fifteen  minute  rule  for  debate,  because 
it  opens  a  wide  field  for  discussion — not  but  that  I  believe  that  any  member 
of  this  House,  no  matter  to  what  political  party  he  belongs,  will  indorse  the 
state  government  and  the  Federal  government,  in  all  legitimate  efforts  to 
preserve  our  institutions,  to  put  down  riots,  and  to  preserve  the  majesty 
of  the  law  of  this  country ! 

I  have  no  sympathy,  Mr.  Speaker,  with  anyone  who  raises  his  arm  in 
violence  to  destroy  property,  or  in  enforcing  what  he  may  consider  his 
rights  of  work,  tries  to  prevent  others  from  working.  No  principle  of 
that  kind  can  find  indorsement  on  the  part  of  anyone  who  has  a  proper 
conception  of  the  rights  of  the  people  of  this  country  to  liberty.  But,  sir, 
in  great  and  disturbing  times,  such  as  we  have  passed  through,  it  often 
happens  that  acts  are  done  under  assumption  of  authority  that  we  may  be 
called  upon  to  indorse  by  a  sweeping  resolution  of  this  character.  As  a 
democrat,  I  am  to-day  where  I  have  always  been ;  and  that  is  for  the  rights 
and  the  dignity  of  the  people  of  the  states. 

I  believe  in  local  state  government  and  that  the  whole  arm  of  the  state 


SPEECHES    FROM     iSjO    TO     1899.  349 

authority  should  be  used  in  suppressing  violence  before  the  Federal  gov 
ernment  should  interfere,  except  to  protect  its  own  property  and  to  protect 
its  mails. 

I  am  aware,  Mr.  Speaker,  that  throughout  this  country,  even  in  states 
where  there  was  no  violence,  and  where  if  violence  occurred  at  all,  the  state 
authorities  are  ready  and  able  to  deal  with  it  without  any  instructions  sent 
out  by  the  Attorney-General,  the  whole  country  was  flooded  with  deputy 
marshals.*  Sheriffs  were  arrested,  state  authority  was  overthrown,  and  the 
strong  arm  of  the  Federal  government  took  possession  of  matters  properly 
belonging  to  the  states.  Against  that,  sir,  I  protest.  I  protest  against 
these  "blanket"  Federal  injunctions.  I  protest  against  the  omnibus  in 
junction.  I  object  to  sending  deputy  marshals  all  over  the  country  to  take 
the  place  of  state  authority.  In  a  measure  like  this  resolution,  urged 
during  the  excitement  of  the  times,  we,  as  a  party,  as  a  democratic  party, 
are  liable  to  do  violence  to  every  democratic  principle  and  to  surrender 
here,  in  these  halls,  as  representatives  of  the  people  of  our  states,  the  es 
sential  democratic  principle  of  local  self-government. 

If  this  Union  is  to  be  maintained,  it  is  to  be  maintained  by  maintain 
ing  and  respecting  the  rights  and  the  authority  of  the  people  of  the  states. 

If  we  are  to  have  imperialism  let  it  not  come  with  the  assent  of  the 
representatives  of  the  people  in  this  House. 


A  STAND  IN  TIME  OF  PANIC. 

(From  a  Speech  in  the  House  of  Representatives  Supporting  a  Motion  to  Strike  out 
the  Enacting  Clause  of  the  Oates  Bankruptcy  Bill.— Dec.  8,"  1893.) 

Gentlemen  who  are  interested  in  banking  rather  than  in  farming  or 
manufacturing,  may  very  properly  advocate  this  bill.  At  a  time  of  panic 
and  distress,  when  manufacturers,  farmers,  mechanics  and  persons  en 
gaged  in  all  branches  of  industry  are  simply  asking  a  little  time,  a  little 
postponement,  with  an  opportunity  to  secure  their  property  from  confisca 
tion  and  to  enter  again  upon  business  enterprises,  we  propose  by  this  bill 
to  put  the  whole  business  interest  of  the  country  into  bankruptcy  and  let 
the  bankers  loot  these  interests.  That  is  the  effect  of  the  measure.  Thou- 

*During  the  Pullman  Strike. 


AN    AMERICAN    COMMONER. 

sands  of  men  throughout  the  country  who  are  in  debt,  who  are  a  little 
cramped  in  their  business  operations,  and  desire  a  little  further  time  will 
recover  themselves  if  we  will  let  them  alone.  If  we  will  permit  them  to 
go  on  in  their  .usual  way  under  state  laws,  without  interfering  with  them, 
they  will  finally  get  out  of  debt  and  become  prosperous. 

But  here  is  a  bill  declaring  all  debts  practically  due  at  this  time,  and 
if  a  man  can  not  meet  his  obligations,  pay  his  expenses,  or  liquidate  all  of 
his  debts  from  day  to  day,  he  is  subject  to  be  declared  a  bankrupt  and  his 
business  and  property  confiscated.  It  is  simply  putting  in  bankruptcy  the 
whole  people  of  the  country  and  subjecting  them  to  be  fleeced  by  bankers 
and  the  banking  capital  of  which  the  gentleman  from  Illinois  speaks. 

Mr.  Speaker,  if  there  is  a  demand  for  the  bankruptcy  system  in  the 
United  States  at  all,  it  is  certainly  not  a  present  demand.  It  is  not  asked 
for  at  this  time. 

It  is  not  demanded  by  business  men  engaged  in  manufacturing  en 
terprises.  It  is  demanded,  if  at  all,  by  the  mercantile  community  and  by 
the  banking  community  who  desire  to  go  out  upon  the  shores  of  our  finan 
cial  distress  and  gather  their  rich  reward  from  the  wreckage  of  the  busi 
ness  and  fortunes  of  the  masses  of  the  people.  It  is  pressed  here  by  that 
class  of  people,  and  not  by  the  laboring  people,  by  the  manufacturing,  the 
farming  or  business  people  of  the  country.  There  is  no  question  about 
that.  The  vote  in  the  committee  of  the  whole,  and  the  records  of  the  rolls 
of  this  House  will  show  the  interests  which  are  involved  in  it. 

Now,  sir,  the  gentleman  talks  about  striking  out  the  enacting  clause 
of  the  bill  as  though  it  were  something  unusual.  I  have  seen  it  done 
frequently  in  this  House.  I  have  seen,  sir,  the  enacting  clause  of  a  tariff 
bill  stricken  out  in  committee  and  the  bill  so  reported  back  to  the  House. 

If  the  House  is  not  ready  for  this  bill,  if  it  does  not  wish  to  pass  a 
bankruptcy  bill  at  this  time,  why  spend  the  time  of  the  House  in  further 
discussion  of  it  ?  My  own  experience  about  these  amendments  of  which 
the  gentleman  speaks  as  perfecting  the  bill  is  that  it  is  not  unusual  in  the 
committee  of  the  whole  under  the  five  minute  rule,  when  the  members  are 
inattentive,  when  they  are  in  the  cloak  rooms  or  scattered  about,  the 
amendments  are  placed  in  the  bill,  making  it  ten  times  worse  than  it  was 
before.  For  my  own  part  I  would  rather  take  the  present  bill,  bad  as  it 
is,  if  we  are  to  have  a  bankruptcy  bill  at  all,  than  to  run  the  risk  of  what 
may  be  added  to  it  in  the  committee  of  the  whole. 

All  of  this  special  plea,  Mr.  Speaker,  about  involuntary  bankruptcy 


SPEECHES    FROM    iSyO    TO    1899.  351 

comes  from  a  source  that  is  well  understood.  We  know  where  the  plea 
comes  from.  The  gentleman  from  Illinois,  when  he  stated  that  there 
ought  to  be  some  involuntary  bankruptcy  proceedings  as  well  as  voluntary 
proceedings,  if  I  understood  him  correctly,  meant — 

MR.  CANNON  of  Illinois :  If  the  gentleman  will  allow  me,  I  will  sug 
gest,  first,  that  there  ought  to  be  a  voluntary  system  of  bankruptcy,  and  a 
bill  providing  for  that  purpose  passed.  I  think  it  entirely  likely,  also,  that 
there  might  be  an  involuntary  provision,  and  there  ought  to  be  such  a 
provision  to  catch  dishonest  men.  I  think,  though,  from  the  little  talk  I 
have  heard  during  this  debate,  that  it  is  altogether  likely  the  invol 
untary  part  of  the  bill  is  not  wise,  and  I  stand  ready  if  it  is  subject  to  that 
criticism  to  help  perfect  it 

MR.  BLAND  :  Mr.  Speaker,  we  are  now  in  the  beginning  of  the  long 
session  of  Congress.  If  this  House  determines  that  it  wants  no  involun 
tary  bankruptcy  bill,  now  is  the  time  to  determine  it,  and  the  committee  on 
judiciary  can  then  frame  and  introduce  here  a  voluntary  bankruptcy 
bill,  and  if  the  gentleman  from  Illiniois  wishes  to  vote  for  it,  it  is  in.  his 
power  to  do  so.  But  I  take  it  for  granted  that  the  membership  of  this 
House  want  no  part  of  this  bill,  and  that  it  is  dangerous  to  go  into  com 
mittee  of  the  whole  to  undertake  to  amend  a  bill  that  has  been  already  con 
demned  by  the  House. 

Now,  sir,  I  do  not  desire  to  take  up  the  time  of  the  House  in  any  fur 
ther  discussion  of  the  bill,  and  if  there  is  no  gentleman  desiring  to  speak 
upon  the  subject  I  move  the  previous  question. 


EUROPEAN  CONTROL  AT  WASHINGTON. 

(From  a  Speech  in  the  House  of  Representatives,  March  31,  1897.) 

MR.  CHAIRMAN  :  The  effect  of  this  bill  known  as  the  Dingley  bill  will 
be  largely  to  increase  the  taxes  of  the  people.  It  will  tend  to  shut  out  impor 
tations,  and  in  that  mode  the  bill  will  necessarily  interfere  with  the  expor- 
tations  of  agricultural  products  from  this  country.  The  trusts  and  com 
binations  now  organized  under  the  shelter  of  our  tariff  system  are  to  be 
more  thoroughly  organized  and  multiplied  by  the  opportunity  given  them 
in  the  high  tax  schedules  of  this  bill,  and  they  will  dominate  and  control 


352 


AN    AMERICAN    COMMONER. 


the  markets  of  this  country.  They  will  fix  the  price  of  all  manufactured 
products  by  it,  and  practically  control  the  prices  of  all  that  the  agricultural 
ists  have  to  sell  as  well  as  what  they  have  to  buy. 

It  is  not  the  remedy  for  present  conditions.  Your  purpose,  as  shown 
by  this  bill,  at  least  the  effect  of  it,  will  be  to  raise  the  prices  of  all  articles 
controlled  by  syndicates  and  trusts  and  at  the  same  time  lower  the  prices 
of  all  other  things.  The  democratic  party  insisted  in  the  last  campaign, 
and  still  insists,  upon  raising  prices  on  commodities  of  the  country  in  a 
uniform  manner.  Our  party  declared  a  policy  of  restoring  the  money  of 
the  Constitution.  We  insisted  on  opening  the  mints  to  the  unlim 
ited  free  coinage  of  silver  and  thereby  increasing  the  volume  of  money. 
This  would  have  the  effect  of  uniformly  raising  prices.  This  policy  would 
benefit  all  classes  alike.  But  you  propose  by  this  bill  to  increase  the  prices 
of  the  products  of  a  particular  class  of  our  people.  Your  bill  is  class 
legislation.  It  will  benefit  the  class  least  deserving  of  favors.  The  rich 
monopolists,  syndicates,  and  combinations  will  be  protected  and  benefited 
as  far  as  the  high  protective  tariff  can  do  so,  but  the  other  producers  of  the 
country  will  be  injured  in  proportion  to  the  benefits  you  confer  upon 
monopolists.  This  is  not  the  remedy  for  our  existing  hard  times. 

It  is  the  stock  and  trade  of  the  republican  party  to  denounce  the  Wil 
son  tariff  bill  as  the  cause  of  our  present  business  depression.  About  the 
only  argument  adduced  in  the  present  debate  is  to  the  effect  that  the  Wil 
son  tariff  bill  lowered  duties,  and  in  that  way  caused  foreign  competition 
with  home  manufacturers,  thereby  crippling  our  home  manufacturers 
and  throwing  labor  out  of  employment  and  bringing  upon  our  people  gen 
eral  distress.  The  fact  is,  however,  that  our  importations  under  the  Wil 
son  bill  have  been  less  than  they  were  under  the  McKinley  bill;  so  that 
argument  falls  to  the  ground. 

The  Wilson  bill  was  not  the  cause  of  our  financial  panics;  it  had 
nothing  to  do  with  bringing  the  people  of  this  country  or  other  countries 
to  penury  and  want.  The  Dingley  bill  will  be  impotent  to  relieve  our 
present  deplorable  condition.  Anyone  familiar  with  the  history  of  the 
country  for  the  past  four  years  will  not  fail  to  note  that  prior  to  the  elec 
tion  of  Mr.  Cleveland,  and  during  the  administration  of  Mr.  Harrison, 
beginning  in  the  latter  part  of  the  year  1891,  a  conspiracy  was  formed  for 
the  purpose  of  compelling  the  suspension  of  free  coinage  of  silver  for 
India  and  the  repeal  of  the  Sherman  law  in  this  country.  In  1891  bills 
were  introduced  in  Congress  to  repeal  the  Sherman  law.  In  December  of 


MR.  ELAND'S  SURVIVING  FAMILY. 

(From  a  Recent  Photograph.) 

(1.)     Mrs.  R.  P.  Bland.  (3.)     E wing  Charles  Bland.  (5.)    George  Vest  Bland. 

(2.)    Theodric  Richard  Bland.         (4.)     Frances  A.  Bland.  (6.)    Virginia  Mary  Bland. 

(7.)    John  Lilburn  Bland. 


SPEECHES    FROM     1 870    TO     1899.  353 

that  year,  Mr.  Sherman,  the  author  of  that  law,  introduced  a  bill  in  the 
Senate  repealing  the  purchasing  clause  of  that  law.  The  metropolitan 
papers  of  the  country,  and  especially  those  of  the  east,  were  demanding  the 
repeal  of  that  law. 

All  the  facts  of  recent  history  show  that  the  banking  institutions  of 
this  country  and  of  England  had  determined  upon  the  repeal  of  the  Sher 
man  law.  Early  in  March,  1892,  a  scheme  to  demonetize  silver  in  India  was 
set  on  foot  in  England,  which  resulted  in  the  appointment  of  a  commission, 
commonly  known  as  the  Herschell  commission,  to  inquire  into  the  Indian 
currency. 

During  the  summer  of  1892  the  secretary  of  the  treasury  of  the  United 
States,  Mr.  Foster,  visited  the  monetary  centers  of  Europe  for  the  pur 
pose  of  ascertaining  the  feasibility  of  holding  a  monetary  conference  to 
consider  the  silver  question.  On  his  return  to  the  United  States,  Congress 
authorized  the  president  to  enter  into  arrangements  with  other  countries 
for  this  conference.  This  conference  convened  at  Brussels  on  November 
22,- 1892.  It  will  be  noted  that  the  Herschell  commission  was  appointed 
some  months  before  the  meeting  of  the  Brussels  conference  and  prior  to 
the  presidential  election  of  1892.  It  will  be  observed  that  these  two  mone 
tary  commissions  were  authorized  in  1892  prior  to  the  presidential  elec 
tion  of  that  year — the  first  on  the  part  of  Great  Britain  to  investigate  the 
silver  question  for  India,  and  the  second  called  at  the  request  of  the  United 
States  for  the  purpose  of  effecting,  if  possible,  an  international  agreement 
for  the  coinage  of  gold  and  silver.  The  Herschell  commission  was  at 
work  upon  the  subject  of  silver  with  the  suspension  of  the  free  coinage  of 
silver  for  India  in  view.  The  proceedings  of  the  Herschell  commission, 
it  would  seem,  were  suspended,  or  at  least  held  back,  for  the  purpose  of 
ascertaining  whether  anything  could  be  accomplished  at  Brussels  by  which 
gold  and  silver  would  be  freely  coined  by  the  several  nations  sending  dele 
gates  to  the  Brussels  conference. 

The  conference  met  at  Brussels  on  the  22d  of  November  1892.  A 
very  able  academic  discussion  of  the  silver  question  took  place  during  the 
sitting  of  this  conference,  which  was  participated  in  by  the  several  dele 
gates  from  this  country  and  the  European  countries  having  a  gold  stand 
ard.  The  conference  accomplished  nothing,  and  broke  up,  or  rather  ad 
journed  over  to  meet  again  in  the  following  May  (1893). 

The  Herschell  commission,  it  would  seem,  awaited  the  second  meeting 
of  the  Brussels  conference  before  taking  final  action  with  respect  to  silver 

23 


354 


AN    AMERICAN    COMMONER, 


in  India. 

When  the  time  arrived  for  the  second  meeting  of  the  Brussels  con 
ference,  no  delegates  appeared.  It  would  seem  that  this  government  had 
purposely  omitted  to  provide  for  the  second  meeting,  having  no  delegation 
at  Brussels,  and  that  no  other  government  insisted  upon  a  further  effort 
for  an  international  agreement  upon  the  subject  of  silver.  The  Herschell 
commission,  about  a  month  after  the  date  fixed  for  the  second  meeting  of 
the  Brussels  conference,  proceeded  to  recommend  the  suspension  of  the 
free  coinage  of  silver  for  India,  and  accordingly  the  British  council  for 
India  issued  a  decree  stopping  the  free  coinage  of  silver  in  India.  This 
caused  a  slump  in  the  silver  market,  and  silver  lost  more  than  twenty 
points  in  value  as  compared  with  gold. 

Following  the  policy  of  Great  Britain  in  demonetizing  silver  for 
India,  the  president  of  the  United  States  in  the  following  August  convened 
Congress  for  the  purpose  of  repealing  the  Sherman  law,  which 
provided  for  the  purchase  of  four  and  one-half  million  ounces  of  silver 
bullion  each  month  and  the  issuing  of  legal  tender  treasury  notes  in  pay 
ment  thereof. 

It  may  be  said  that  the  failure  to  reach  an  international  agreement  at 
Brussels  precipitated  the  demonetization  of  silver  for  India  and  the  repeal 
of  the  purchasing  clause  of  the  Sherman  law  in  this  country.  In  fact,  it 
seems  that  every  international  conference  thus  far  held  has  been  a  failure 
so  far  as  coming  to  any  agreement  is  concerned,  and  that  the  failure  of 
these  conferences  has  afforded  pretexts  for  hostile  legislation  against 
silver.  It  will  be  further  noted  in  this  connection  that  in  August,  1892, 
the  Austrian  government  authorized  the  finance  minister  of  that  country  to 
sell  bonds  from  time  time  to  procure  gold  in  sufficient  quantity  to  estab 
lish  and  maintain  the  single  gold  standard. 

To  recapitulate  the  situation  in  1892  and  1893:  Austria  began  in 
August,  1892,  to  prepare  for  the  single  gold  standard;  the  British  gov 
ernment  early  in  1892  began  preparations  for  the  suspension  of  the  free 
coinage  of  silver  in  India,  and  in  December,  1892,  bills  were  introduced  in 
the  Congress  of  the  United  States  for  the  repeal  of  our  silver  law.  There 
seems  to  have  been  a  concerted  movement  in  Europe  and  in  this  country 
for  the  total  destruction  of  silver  as  money.  This  movement  caused  a 
financial  panic  in  all  gold  standard  countries.  This  panic  was  upon  us  be 
fore  the  inauguration  of  Mr.  Cleveland  as  president ;  indeed,  it  had  begun 
in  Europe  and  reached  our  shores  before  the  presidential  election.  Doubt- 


SPEECHES    FROM     iSjO    TO     1899.  355 

less  Mr.  Harrison's  administration  hoped,  by  bringing  about  an  inter 
national  agreement,  to  stop  this  feeling  of  panic  and  possibly  accomplish  an 
international  agreement  that  might  save  the  world  from  the  blow  then 
threatened  to  be  inflicted  by  Austria,  India,  and  the  United  States  in 
1892-93. 

As  evidence  that  some  of  the  great  financiers  of  the  world  had  a  dread 
and  apprehension  of  this  question,  I  read  the  statement  of  one  of  Great 
Britain's  delegates  at  the  Brussels  conference.  Mr.  de  Rothschild  said: 

The  stock  of  silver  in  the  world  is  estimated  at  some  thousands  of 
millions,  and  if  this  conference  were  to  break  up  without  arriving  at  any 
definite  results  there  would  be  a  depreciation  in  the  value  of  that  com 
modity  which  it  would  be  frightful  to  contemplate,  and  out  of  which  a 
monetary  panic  would  ensue,  the  far-spreading  effects  of  which  it  would 
be  impossible  to  foretell. 

Other  apprehensions  with  regard  to  the  probable  effects  of  threatened 
legislation  at  that  time  on  the  silver  question  might  be  quoted,  but  it  is 
not  deemed  necessary.  It  is  only  necessary  to  remind  any  intelligent  stu 
dent  or  thinker  upon  financial  questions  of  the  legislation  above  referred 
to  in  order  that  he  may  understand  and  admit  that  a  monetary  revolution 
such  as  took  place  could  have  no  other  effect  than  that  foretold  by  Baron 
Rothschild. 

It  is,  therefore,  senseless  as  well  as  insincere  to  attempt  to  make  it  ap 
pear  that  the  passage  of  the  Wilson  tariff  bill  was  the  cause  of  the  financial 
panic  that  occurred  concurrently  with  the  adoption  of  the  gold  standard 
for  Austria,  and  the  sale  of  bonds  to  the  amount  of  some  forty  millions 
by  that  country  for  gold,  the  suspension  of  the  free  coinage  for  India,  and 
the  repeal  of  the  Sherman  law  for  this  country.  The  panic  for  1893  was, 
unquestionably,  the  result  of  the  silver  legislation  above  referred  to.  It 
took  place  more  than  a  year  prior  to  the  passage  of  the  Wilson  bill.  The 
cause  for  this  panic  occurred  many  months  before  the  election  of  Mr. 
Cleveland.  We  have  not  as  yet  recovered  from  the  effects  of  this  legis 
lation  on  the  silver  question.  It  will  be  impossible  to  recover  either  under 
the  Wilson  bill  or  the  Dingley  bill.  No  tariff  bill  can  have  such  an  effect. 
The  effect  of  tariff  bills  is  to  tax  the  people;  to  take  money  from  their 
pockets ;  to  store  it  up  in  the  public  treasuries,  or  to  put  in  in  the  coffers  of 
the  monopolies.  No  tariff  bill  provides  for  supplying  the  people 
with  money,  but  on  the  contrary,  it  takes  from  the  pockets  of  the  producer 
what  little  money  he  may  have. 

In  the  debates  at  the  time  of  the  passage  of  the  Sherman  law,  the 


356  AN    AMERICAN    COMMONER. 

author  of  the  bill,  Mr.  Sherman,  stated  that  the  bill  would  put  in  circula 
tion  annually  some  $55,0x30,000  of  money;  that  this  amount  of  additional 
currency  was  necessary  to  meet  the  annual  increase  in  our  population, 
wealth,  and  trade.  This  was  urged  by  the  friends  of  the  Sherman  bill  as 
being  necessary  to  the  prosperity  of  the  people.  The  bill  was  repealed  in 
November,  1893 — three  and  one-half  years  ago.  This  repeal  has  caused  a 
loss  or  contraction  of  our  currency,  according  to  the  theory  of  the  advo 
cates  of  the  bill  to  the  amount  of  nearly  $200,000,000.  This  of  itself  is  a 
sufficient  explanation  of  the  financial  distress  of  our  people.  India  coined 
and  put  in  circulation  before  the  repeal  of  the  free  coinage  of  silver  in  that 
country  took  place  about  $40,000,000  annually.  It  has  been  nearly  four 
years  since  the  suspension  of  free  coinage  of  silver  for  India.  We  think 
that  we  are  warranted  in  saying  that  the  suspension  of  free  coinage  of  sil 
ver  for  India  and  the  repeal  of  the  Sherman  law  in  this  country  have  up  to 
this  time  worked  a  contraction  of  the  world's  money  to  an  amount  equal 
to  at  least  $350,000,000. 

History  shows  beyond  doubt  that  from  the  day  the  German  govern 
ment  demonetized  silver,  and  the  suspension  of  the  coinage  of  standard 
silver  dollars  in  this  country  in  1873,  every  blow  struck  at  silver  by  any 
important  nation  has  caused  disturbances  in  the  money  market  and  re 
sulted  in  the  reduction  of  prices. 

To  restore  prosperity  to  this  country  we  must  retrace  our  steps;  we 
must  restore  silver  to  its  time-honored  place  as  a  money  metal;  we  must 
give  equal  rights  to  silver  with  gold  at  the  ratio  prevailing — 16  to  I — and 
open  up  our  mints  to  the  unlimited  coinage  of  both  metals. 


ADMINISTRATIVE     CORRUPTION     DUE    TO    ARBITRARY 
POWER  AND  CIVIL  WAR. 

(From  a  Speech  in  the  House  of  Representatives,  June  25,  1882.) 

The  republican  party  in  Missouri  disfranchised  over  fifty  thousand 
voters — every  man  who  had  sympathized  with  those  engaged  in  rebellion ; 
prohibited  him  from  voting,  prohibited  him  from  holding  any  office,  act 
ing  in  any  capacity  of  trust,  public  or  private.  He  could  not  be  the  ad 
ministrator  of  an  estate.  He  could  not  sit  upon  a  jury  or  even  preach  the 


SPEECHES    FROM     iSjO    TO     1899.  357 

Gospel  or  solemnize  a  marriage  ceremony.  He  was  outlawed,  trodden 
upon.  Under  the  reconstruction  acts  in  all  the  southern  states,  public 
affairs  were  no  better  than  in  Missouri.  Military  rule  prevailed  every 
where.  The  republican  rule  in  the  south  gave  to  that  country  such 
worthies  as  Warmouth,  Packard,  Wells,  Darrall,  and  Anderson,  in  Louisi 
ana,  and  others  I  might  name;  Bullock,  in  Georgia;  Ames  in  Mississippi, 
and  Chamberlain  and  Moses,  in  South  Carolina,  and  many  others  too 
numerous  to  mention. 

Under  that  rule  the  legislature  of  Louisiana  was  dispersed  with  the 
bayonet.  Governors  were  kept  in  power  by  military  force  against  the 
voice  of  the  people.  The  same  thing  was  done  in  South  Carolina.  It 
was  not  until  a  democratic  congress  refused  to  grant  military  supplies 
and  appropriations  until  this  rule  was  withdrawn  that  South  Carolina  and 
Louisiana  were  enabled  to  see  inaugurated  governors  of  their  choice. 
Having  inaugurated  one  president  by  fraud  and  force — I  say  force  for  it 
is  well  known  that  at  the  time  this  capitol  was  surrounded  with  military 
brought  here  for  the  purpose  by  President  Grant,  whose  intention  was 
boasted  to  be  to  inaugurate  Hayes  or  plunge  the  country  in  civil  war — the 
business  interests  of  the  country  were  paralyzed,  and  the  democrats  in 
this  House  were  everywhere  appealed  to  to  give  up  the  fight  for  the  inau 
guration  of  Tilden  and  Hendricks,  in  order  to  preserve  republican  insti 
tutions  from  the  military  rule  threatened  by  Grant,  a  republican  president. 
What  was  the  result?  Hayes  vetoed  every  measure  passed  by  the  demo 
crats  for  the  relief  of  the  country  and  the  curtailing  of  the  power  of  mo 
nopolies  and  corporate  wealth.  He  vetoed  the  silver  bill;  the  bill  to  pre 
vent  troops  at  the  polls;  the  bill  that  placed  the  bonds  at  a  low  rate  of 
interest  and  provided  for  their  payment,  and  the  extinguishment  of  the 
national  banks. 

The  greed  for  office,  for  political  power,  and  public  plunder  did  not 
cease  with  the  inauguration  of  Mr.  Hayes.  This  precedent  of  fraud  and 
force,  this  example  of  terror  and  lawlessness,  had  its  fruit  afterward. 
When  the  next  election  for  president  came,  we  find  the  henchmen  in  the 
republican  party  bargaining  and  intriguing  among  themselves  for  the 
control  of  office  and  patronage. 

Public  moneys  stolen  by  the  star-route  thieves  were  poured  into  In 
diana  by  the  million  to  purchase  that  state  at  the  October  election  for  the 
republican  party.  Thus,  by  the  corrupt  use  of  public  moneys,  were  their 
candidates  elected.  General  Garfield  was  inaugurated  president.  He  had 


353 


AN    AMERICAN    COMMONER, 


but  begun  the  duties  of  his  high  office  when  it  was  charged  by  two  of  the 
leading  senators  of  his  party  that  he  had  violated  his  pledges  and  agree 
ments,  by  which,  before  the  election,  he  had  promised  to  give  to  them  the 
control  of  the  Federal  patronage  in  the  state  of  New  York.  This  feud 
led  to  the  resignation  of  those  senators,  and  they  left  their  seats  and  went 
home  to  the  legislature  of  their  state,  asking  to  be  returned  as  a  rebuke  to 
their  own  party  administration.  The  intense  excitement  of  these  events 
finally  culminated  in  a  heart-rending  tragedy  that  startled  the  world  and 
clothed  the  republic  in  sackcloth  and  ashes. 

Need  I  say  that  all  these  crimes — crimes  of  forcing  upon  the  Ameri 
can  people  a  usurper  in  the  high  office  of  Chief  Magistrate,  of  plundering 
the  treasury  by  venal  office  holders,  and  the  stolen  moneys  used  to  corrupt 
the  ballot  box,  of  bargaining  and  parceling  out  the  offices  and  places  of 
political  power  as  a  consideration  for  support  in  elections,  bore  the  bitter 
fruit  of  political  assassination  ? 


AGAINST  BUREAUCRATIC  PRIVILEGE. 

(From  a  Speech  in  the  House  of  Representatives,  June  25,    1882,   Opposing  a  Civil 

Pension  Bill.) 

This  bill  proposes  to  pension  persons  engaged  in  the  civil  service,  and, 
as  far  as  I  know,  it  is  the  first  proposition  that  looks  to  the  general  pen 
sioning  of  those  in  official  positions.  It  is  true  that  this  is  confined  to 
postoffice  inspectors,  superintendents  of  money-order  offices,  railway  mail 
agents,  and  to  messengers.  But  that  is  the  very  beginning;  if  we  are  to 
pension  the  widows  of  these  officers  or  the  officers  themselves  when  they 
meet  with  misfortune,  why  not  continue  it  to  all  the  officers  of  the  gov 
ernment  who  may  meet  with  misfortune  while  engaged  in  official  position  ? 
If  the  gentleman,  my  colleague,  a  member  of  congress,  should  unfortun 
ately  contract  a  disease  superinduced  by  the  malaria  of  Washington  and  be 
come  disabled  so  that  he  could  not  support  himself  in  private  business,  why 
should  not  he  be  pensioned  also  ?  Why  not  run  it  through  all  the  branches 
of  the  government? 

In  England  and  other  countries  where  office  holders  are  a  privileged 
and  aristocratic  class  they  take  care  of  themselves  and  their  posterity  by 


SPEECHES    FROM    1870    TO    1899.  359 

providing  pensions  of  this"  sort.  But  this  is  the  first  time  in  free  America 
that  a  proposition  so  extended  as  this  has  been  made  to  pension  the  office 
holders  of  this  government.  Our  pension  list  now  is  enormous  and  grow 
ing  every  day,  made  up  of  army  and  navy  pensions.  This  we  have  done 
before.  Our  soldiers  in  the  Mexican  war,  Revolutionary  war,  and  war  of 
1812  have  been  pensioned.  The  American  people  are  satisfied  with  pen 
sioning  those  who  have  suffered  in  consequence  of  their  patriotic  services 
in  time  of  war.  But  the  idea  of  pensioning  the  100,000  office  holders  of 
this  government  is  to  place  the  tax  upon  the  American  people  beyond  en 
durance.  Only  two  days  ago  we  passed  an  appropriation  of  $100,000,000 
for  pensions. 

It  is  calculated  that  it  will  take  $500,000,000  to  meet  the  require 
ments  of  the  arrearage-of-pension  act  alone,  to  say  nothing  of  the  gen 
eral  and  special  laws  with  reference  to  pensions.  Yet  upon  top  of  all 
this  my  greenback  colleague  proposes  that  the  government  shall  extend 
its  gratuity  to  the  civil  list  as  well  as  the  army  list.  He  certainly  does  not 
mean  to  hold  this  out  as  some  extra  inducement  for  gentlemen  to  seek 
positions  under  the  government.  The  pressure  now  is  greatly  beyond  en 
durance. 

The  civil  service  of  the  government  is  now  constituted  for  political 
purposes.  There  is  a  universal  and  demoralizing  scramble  for  these  offices. 
Hence,  there  is  no  necessity  for  any  further  pay  or  inducement  for  men  to 
seek  and  accept  these  positions.  Let  them  do  as  individuals  in  private 
station  do — provide  for  their  widows  and  their  orphans  by  policies  of  in 
surance  upon  their  lives,  and  otherwise. 


FRAUD  AND  FORCE    IN  GOVERNMENT. 

(From  a  Speech  in  the  House  of  Kepresentatives,  January  26,  1877.) 

MR.  SPEAKER  :  This  is  the  first  instance  in  the  history  of  our  govern 
ment  that  a  dispute  as  to  who  is  the  rightfully-elected  president  of  the 
United  States  has  arisen.  It  is  true  that  none  dispute  the  fact  that  Mr. 
Tilden  received  nearly  a  quarter  of  a  million  majority  of  the  popular  vote, 
and  if  he  is  not  declared  the  president  it  will  also  be  the  first  instance  in  our 


360  AN    AMERICAN    COMMONER. 

history  where  a  candidate  who  received  such  a  majority  of  the  popular  vote 
was  not  elected. 

Those  who  undertake  to  explain  or  apologize  for  this  anomaly  pretend 
that  it  is  owing  to  some  mysterious  defect  in  our  constitutional  provisions 
for  the  election  of  president;  but  such  is  not  wholly  the  case.  Why  the 
country  should  now  be  in  a  state  of  political  perturbation  and  business 
paralysis  is  a  question  of  easy  solution.  Last  June  the  republican  party 
met  in  convention  at  Cincinnati  and  announced  its  platform  and  nominated 
its  candidates  for  president  and  vice-president.  A  short  time  thereafter 
the  democratic  party  met  in  convention  at  St.  Louis  and  announced  its 
platform  and  nominated  its  candidates  for  president  and  vice-president. 
Thus  the  two  political  parties  went  to  the  country  with  their  respective 
candidates  and  declared  policy  and  principles.  It  was  reasonably  sup 
posed  at  that  time  that  the  verdict  of  a  majority  of  the  people  rendered 
upon  the  issue  presented  would  be  final  and  respected  by  all  parties  as 
conclusive. 

But  Mr.  Speaker,  when  the  October  elections  clearly  foreshadowed 
the  victory  of  the  democratic  candidates,  the  question  was  raised  by  dis 
tinguished  republican  senators  and  politicians  as  to  who  should  count  and 
how  should  be  counted  the  electoral  vote.  Republican  organs  throughout 
the  country  gave  it  to  be  understood  that  in  case  the  election  of  Tilden  and 
Hendricks  depended  upon  the  electoral  votes  of  South  Carolina  or  Florida, 
and  especially  Louisiana,  they  would  never  be  inaugurated.  Just  why  the 
vote  of  these  states,  or  any  one  of  them  should  not  elect  Tilden  and  Hen 
dricks  and  yet  should  elect  Hayes  and  Wheeler,  is  made  clear  only  when 
we  consider  that  after  the  October  elections  it  was  reasonably  certain  that 
if  Tilden  and  Hendricks  carried  any  one  of  them  they  would  be  elected. 
The  republicans  had  upheld  governments  in  these  states  so  long  against 
the  will  of  the  people  that  they  were  considered  the  property  of  that  party. 
These  states  had  been  so  long  dragged  at  the  car  of  the  republican  party, 
riveted  there  with  Federal  bayonets,  that  any  attempt  to  relieve  them  from 
their  bondage  was  regarded  as  treason. 

It  is  clear  that  this  controversy  was  determined  upon  by  republican 
leaders  before  the  election  took  place.  Whether  you  call  it  a  conspiracy 
or  what  not,  all  know  that  this  difficulty  was  foreshadowed  by  the  repub 
lican  leaders  and  boldly  announced  in  their  leading  organs  two  weeks  be 
fore  the  election.  They  had  determined  Tilden  and  Hendricks  should  not 
have  the  electoral  votes  of  any  of  those  states,  for  the  simple  reason  that 


SPEECHES    FROM    iSjO    TO     1899.  361 

the  republican  party  had  in  those  states  unscrupulous  tools  of  their  own 
for  returning  boards,  and  knew  they  could  be  used  to  count  fraudulently — 
to  count  majorities  into  minorities  — that  they  could  and  would,  in  plain 
words,  be  induced  to  count  the  votes  of  all  those  states  for  Hayes  and 
Wheeler,  no  matter  how  the  people  might  vote.  Knowing  these  facts, 
the  declaration  was  made  before  the  election  that  Tilden  and  Hendricks 
should  not  be  inaugurated,  if  their  election  depended  upon  the  electoral 
vote  of  any  of  those  states.  The  republican  leaders  have  made  good  their 
threats;  hence  the  fact  confronts  us  that  the  two  if  not  all  three  of  those 
states  voted  for  Tilden  and  Hendricks,  but  have  been  counted  for  Hayes 
and  Wheeler. 

Mr.  Speaker,  it  is  not  my  purpose  to  enter  into  a  discussion  of  the 
powers  of  this  House  or  of  Congress  to  remedy  this  outrage.  I  am  ready 
to  cooperate  in  any  lawful  way  to  right  this  wrong,  and  believing  that  the 
bill  proposed  by  the  joint  committee  is  the  best  that  can  now  be  devised, 
I  am  disposed  to  give  it  my  support.  This  bill,  however,  is  intended  for  this 
occasion  and  is  not  designed  as  a  permanent  statute.  It  only  meets  an 
emergency  that  now  exists.  No  law  can  be  devised  that  will  be  so  per 
fect  in  all  its  scope  and  details  as  to  be  an  absolute  check  upon  rascality 
like  this.  We  have  all  the  laws  upon  the  subject  now  that  our  fathers  and 
fathers'  fathers  believed  necessary.  You  will  amend  your  constitution, 
enact  statutes,  and  adopt  rules  in  vain  if  this  sort  of  politics  is  to  be  tol 
erated  in  this  government.  So  long  as  the  people  shall  sustain  a  party 
that  thus  defies  law  and  decency,  our  country  is  liable  at  any  moment  to 
be  plunged  in  a  shoreless  sea  of  civil  discord  and  anarchy.  No  law  can  be 
enacted  that  dishonest  and  corrupt  officials  will  not  evade  and  falsify  for 
political  ends. 

Fraud  has  clothed  in  legal  forms  the  result  of  corrupt  returning 
boards,  and  thus  sent  here  in  the  garments  of  law  villainous  cheats  in 
shape  of  electoral  votes  from  Florida  and  Louisiana  to  be  counted  for 
Hayes  and  Wheeler.  Force  stands  ready  with  Federal  bayonets  declaring 
that  the  men  thus  elected  shall  be  inaugurated. 

Mr.  Speaker,  as  a  representative  of  the  people,  I  am  not  inclined  to 
accede  to  anything  that  in  my  judgment  looks  in  any  other  direction  than 
the  ultimate  triumph  of  the  right.  Yet  I  must  admit  that  there  is  too  much 
of  the  appearance  of  compromising  with  wrong  in  this  measure  not  to  call 
attention  to  the  grave  dangers  in  the  future.  That  Tilden  and  Hendricks 
were  elected  fairly,  and  honestly  elected  president  and  vice-president  of 


362  AN    AMERICAN    COMMONER. 

the  United  States  in  the  late  election  I  can  not  believe  any  intelligent  man 
doubts.  Whether  they  are  to  be  cheated  out  of  this  victory  and  the  people 
of  their  choice  depends  upon  the  result  of  this  commission.  I  dislike  even 
to  admit  that  there  is  a  possibility  of  this  conspiracy  succeeding. 

But  sir,  there  is  much  here  for  reflection.  The  people  of  this  gov 
ernment  are  yet  to  decide  at  the  ballot  box  whether  a  party  that  has  brought 
so  much  fraud,  corruption  and  dishonor  upon  this  country  will  in  the  future 
meet  with  their  favor.  If  so,  I  can  not  see  that  there  is  much  hope  for  our 
republican  institutions.  We  will  soon  be  upon  the  level  of  Mexico,  where 
the  boldest  political  buccaneer  by  force  and  fraud  usurps  power  and  op 
presses  the  people  till  some  other  freebooter  supplants  him.  Force  breeds 
fraud,  and  fraud  in  turn  results  in  force.  Louisiana  has  been  governed  by 
force  of  Federal  bayonets.  Federal  interference  installed  a  bogus  gov 
ernment  in  i87o  and  i872.  Again  in  1874.  The  same  fraud  and  force  are 
appealed  to  in  i877.  Shall  it  succeed  ?  I  think  not.  It  is  to  be  hoped  that 
prejudice  and  passion  will  die  out;  that  the  fearful  crisis  through  which 
we  are  now  passing  will  exhibit  to  the  people  of  this  country  the  terrible 
dangers  that  lie  in  our  path  as  a  nation  should  we  so  far  depart  from  the 
government  and  principles  of  our  fathers  as  longer  to  tolerate  the  usurpa 
tions  of  such  men  as  Wells,  Anderson,  Packard,  Kellogg,  "et  id  omne 
genus." 

Mr.  Speaker,  I  might  compare  this  Confederacy  to  the  Siamese  Twins ; 
each  state  possessing  an  independent  entity  and  individuality,  all  are  linked 
together  and  thus  constituting  the  Federal  Union,  bound  together  with 
ligaments  of  flesh  and  blood,  so  that  no  one  of  them  can  possibly  suffer 
without  affecting  all.  If  poison  be  inserted  in  the  veins  of  one,  all  become 
contaminated.  Thus  we  see  that  the  fraud  and  corruption  injected  into 
the  body-politic  of  Louisiana  by  Federal  bayonets  has  at  last  infected  the 
whole  nation  with  a  moral  leprosy. 

The  malignant  virus  that  we  have  permitted,  even  fostered,  in  the 
bayonet  states  of  South  Carolina,  Florida  and  Louisiana,  has  at  last  cir 
cled  the  whole  body-politic  of  this  government ;  and  now,  from  the  lakes  to 
the  Gulf,  and  from  ocean  to  ocean,  the  words  "fraud  and  corruption," 
"force  and  violence,"  are  on  the  lips  of  all.  The  Louisiana  returning 
board  has  been  condemned  in  the  house  of  its  friends.  Its  president  and 
leading  member  was  branded  as  a  dishonest  man  and  removed  from  office 
as  governor  of  Louisiana  by  General  Sheridan,  because  of  his  alleged  cor 
ruption  and  dishonesty.  A  republican  committee  of  this  House,  two  years 


SPEECHES    FROM    1870    TO     1899.  363 

ago,  condemned  the  board  for  doing  the  very  acts  for  which  it  is  now 
upheld.  Why  is  it  that  the  frauds  condemned  two  years  ago  by  a  repub 
lican  committee  of  this  House,  by  the  leading  journals  and  statesmen  of 
both  parties,  should  now  be  apologized  for  by  members  on  this  floor?  If 
it  was  dishonest  to  count  out  a  democratic  majority  then,  it  is,  if  possible, 
more  so  now;  for  the  majority  is  larger  now  than  at  that  time,  and  the  re 
sults  of  vastly  greater  moment.  Our  republican  friends  could  afford  to 
condemn  fraud  when  it  affected  only  the  result  in  Louisiana,  but  now 
that  the  election  of  Mr.  Hayes  depends  upon  upholding  and  apologizing 
for  that  fraud  we  find  a  different  stand  is  taken.  When  it  comes  to 
this,  that  a  political  party  of  the  numbers,  power,  and  influence  of  the  re 
publican  party  is  willing  not  only  to  accept,  but  to  hazard  a  civil  war  to 
secure  the  supposed  advantages  of  such  frauds,  then  indeed  may  we  de 
spair  of  our  country's  perpetuity. 

As  I  said  before,  there  is  no  rule  or  law,  no  constitution  that  can  be 
framed  so  far-reaching  in  its  provisions  as  to  provide  for  all  the  possible 
tricks  of  evasion  and  rascally  inventions  of  corrupt,  designing  men.  If 
our  republic  is  to  stand,  it  will  be  because  the  people  will  remorselessly 
frown  down  the  wrong  and  determinedly  uphold  the  right.  Let  it  be 
known  that  corruption  shall  be  visited  with  the  scorn  and  detestation  of 
every  honest  man,  come  from  what  party  or  source  it  may.  What  can  be 
expected  of  a  man  or  party  that  secures  position  in  this  government  by  a 
false  and  fraudulent  count  of  ballots  ?  The  ballot  box  contains  the  voters' 
will.  Where  in  all  this  country,  or  where  on  earth  except  in  Louisiana,  is 
to  be  found  the  man  or  set  of  men  whose  penetrating  minds  and  disinter 
ested,  honest  judgment  can  determine  the  desire  of  the  voter  who  casts  a 
ballot  better  than  the  voter  himself  as  shown  by  his  ballot  ? 

There  is  no  power  on  earth,  and  none  above  it  save  One,  that  de 
serves  the  title  of  "The  Searcher  of  Hearts,"  yet  this  returning  board  as 
sumes  that  divine  attribute,  and  our  republican  friends  swear  this  board 
has  correctly  searched  the  hearts  of  over  twelve  thousand  male  adult  citi 
zens  of  Louisiana,  and  has  determined  from  their  penetrating,  all-power 
ful  examination  that  this  twelve  thousand  men  voted  directly  opposite  to 
what  each  of  them  intended  or  desired.  Mr.  Speaker,  what  greatness 
must  be  in  the  future  for  a  state  that  has  for  its  citizens  four  men  who  can 
fathom  the  hearts  and  minds  of  every  voter  in  it  and  determine  to  a  demon 
stration  just  how  each  voter  desires  to  cast  his  ballot,  with  power  to  count 
accordingly.  Why,  sir,  there  is  no  use  at  all  for  an  election  there,  because 


364 


AN    AMERICAN    COMMONER, 


these  four  men  know  better  than  the  voter  how  the  voter  should  or  would 
vote  or  intended  to  vote.  All  that  is  necessary  is  a  census  table  to  ascer 
tain  the  approximate  number  of  voters,  so  that  of  that  number  each  can 
didate  may  have  his  due  proportion.  Still  I  hardly  see  the  necessity  for 
census  tables.  If  their  intention  is  such  as  to  know  just  how  every  voter 
intends  to  vote,  the  board  ought  to  know  how  many  voters  there  are,  their 
names,  personal  and  political  predilections.  The  advantage  of  having  such 
powerful  men  consists  in  the  fact  that,  with  their  knowledge  of  the  will  of 
the  people,  they  can  declare  that  will  at  the  proper  time  without  the  voters 
of  the  state  taking  the  time  or  trouble  to  go  to  the  polls.  Thus  each  one 
of  them  will  save  to  himself  his  day's  work,  instead  of  going  to  the  elec 
tion,  and  the  state  will  be  saved  the  costs  attending  elections.  A  happy 
state,  Louisiana !  O,  for  a  returning  board  in  all  the  states !  Millions  can 
be  saved  the  people  by  this  happy  invention. 

But,  Mr.  Speaker,  why  the  necessity  of  any  forms  of  election  at  all 
in  Louisiana  or  elsewhere  ?  If  these  great  men  can  so  accurately  judge  the 
will  of  the  people  of  Louisiana,  why  not  of  the  whole  nation  ?  Their  pen 
etration  of  hearts  can  not  be  confined  to  the  dangers  of  that  state  alone. 
Being  the  searcher  of  all  hearts  and  knowing  the  will  and  intent  of  people 
in  this  respect,  why  not  say  to  these  eminent  men :  Take  control  of 
this  government ;  you  know  the  will  of  the  people  so  perfectly  that  you  will 
never  make  a  mistake;  you  can  always  govern  us  according  to  our  will 
without  asking  us  any  questions  on  that  subject?  May  the  splinters  of 
this  board  never  grow  less,  but  multiply  until  it  is  shivered  and  splintered 
from  Louisiana  to  Maine.  But  we  had  forgotten  Florida.  Money  and 
troops  seem  to  have  been  the  means  of  enlightening  the  board  there.  There 
a  Tilden  majority  was  transformed  into  a  Hayes  majority.  It  is  true  that 
Governor  Stearns  said  it  would  require  money  and  troops  to  accomplish 
the  feat  of  legerdemain.  Chandler  was  equal  to  the  emergency.  So 
troops  were  ordered  to  Florida  to  see  a  fair  count  for  Hayes  and  a  fraudu 
lent  count  for  Tilden. 

This  Louisiana  returning  board  consisted  of  two  white  men  and  two 
negroes,  all  republicans,  and  what  is  still  worse,  all  rogues.  The  law 
made  some  pretense  of  fairness  by  requiring  that  both  political  parties 
should  be  represented  in  the  board,  but  that  small  piece  of  justice  was  de 
nied  the  democratic  party.  I  stated  before  that  this  board  had  been  con 
demned  to  infamy  in  the  house  of  its  friends.  I  shall  now  quote  from  the 
report  of  the  select  committee  on  the  condition  of  the  south  in  their  re- 


SPEECHES    FROM    iSyO    TO     1899.  365 

port  made  to  the  Forty-third  Congress.  That  congress  we  all  know  was 
republican.  This  committee  was  a  republican  committee,  Mr.  Wheeler, 
late  candidate  of  that  party  for  the  high  office  of  vice-president,  being  a 
member  of  the  committee.  This  committee  goes  on  to  say : 

The  law  provides  that  this  committee  shall  consist  of  five  persons 
"from  all  political  parties/'  It  consisted  at  the  opening  of  their  last  session 
of  five  republicans,  upon  the  resignation  of  one  of  whom  (General  Long- 
street)  Mr.  Arroyo,  a  conservative,  was  taken  to  fill  the  vacancy.  After 
protesting  against  the  action  of  the  board  in  secret  session  he  resigned 
about  the  conclusion  of  their  labors,  and  his  place  was  not  filled;  so  that, 
as  your  committee  think,  the  law  as  to  the  constitution  of  the  board  was 
not  complied  with. 

Remember  that  the  same  members  of  the  board  acted  at  the  last  elec 
tion,  and  under  this  same  law  alluded  to  in  this  report.  At  the  last  elec 
tion  the  democrats  requested  that  the  law  be  complied  with  by  the  ap 
pointment  of  a  democrat  upon  the  board.  This  request  was  persistently 
refused.  We  here  have  the  testimony  of  a  republican  committee  that  the 
law  in  1874  and  i876  was  not  complied  with.  This  same  committee  fur 
ther  on  uses  the  following  language : 

Your  committee  are  therefore  constrained  to  declare  that  the  action 
of  the  returning  board,  in  rejecting  these  returns  in  the  parish  of  Rapides 
and  giving  the  seats  for  that  parish  to  the  republican  candidates,  was  arbi 
trary,  unfair,  and  without  warrant  of  law.  If  the  committee  were  to  go 
behind  the  papers  before  the  board  and  consider  the  alleged  charge  of  in 
timidation  upon  the  proofs  before  the  committee,  their  finding  would  nec 
essarily  be  the  same.  It  was  asserted  in  Governor  Wells's  affidavit  that 
the  McEnery  officials  had  usurped  the  offices  of  the  parish,  and  thereby 
intimidated  voters.  Immediately  after  the  I4th  of  September,  when  the 
Kellogg  authorities  in  New  Orleans  were  put  out  by  the  Penn  authorities, 
certain  changes  took  place  in  some  of  the  parishes.  When  the  news  from 
New  Orleans  reached  these  parishes  the  McEnery  officials  demanded  their 
places  of  the  Kellogg  officials,  and  they  were  at  once  given  up.  When  the 
Federal  government  intervened  and  unseated  the  McEnery  authorities,  the 
Kellogg  officials  demanded  and  received  back  their  places ;  but  in  Rapides 
some  time  seems  to  have  elapsed  before  the  Kellogg  officials  took  their 
places  back;  indeed,  the  McEnery  register  of  deeds  was  still  acting  as 
such  when  your  committee  were  in  New  Orleans,  the  Kellogg  register 
never  having  come  to  reclaim  the  place,  which  is  said  to  be  worth  nothing. 

If  the  returning  board,  in  the  language  of  this  republican  committee, 
acted  arbitrarily,  unfairly,  and  without  warrant  of  law  in  1874,  in  count 
ing  out  members  of  the  legislature,  what  could  we  expect  of  them  when 
the  far  greater  prize  of  the  presidency  was  at  stake  ?  The  past  conduct  of 
this  board  as  here  shown  was  guarantee  sufficient  to  the  republican  mana 
gers  here  at  Washington  that  Hayes  would  be  counted  in  provided  the 


366  AN    AMERICAN    COMMONER. 

troops  and  money  were  forthcoming.  The  troops  and  money  were  duly  on 
hand  as  required.  The  result  was  that  a  clear  democratic  majority  of  over 
8,000  was  transformed  into  a  republican  majority  of  near  4,000,  making  a 
difference  of  12,000  votes  as  counted  by  the  returning  board  and  as  actu 
ally  cast  at  the  polls.  Hence,  Hayes  is  declared  elected  and  Tilden  de 
feated.  Is  this  arbitrary,  unfair,  and  without  warrant  of  law?  All  hon 
est  men,  it  seems  to  me,  would  think  it  a  little  arbitrary,  unfair  and  without 
warrant  of  law.  This  report  is  full  of  sweeping  condemnations  of  this 
board. 

I  can  not  do  better  than  to  read  a  little  further  from  this  same  book. 
On  page  four  is  the  following : 

The  action  of  the  returning  board  in  the  parish  of  Rapides  alone 
changed  the  political  complexion  of  the  lower  house,  but  their  action  in 
other  parishes  was  equally  objectionable.  For  instance,  in  Iberia  parish 
it  was  claimed  before  your  committee  that  the  vote  of  poll  No.  I  in  that 
parish  had  been  rejected  on  account  of  intimidation,  but  the  papers  pro 
duced  by  the  clerk  of  the  board  showed  no  such  proof  whatever.  One  of 
the  counsel,  Mr.  Ray,  produced  some  affidavits  which  he  declared  had 
been  submitted  to  the  board  by  another  of  the  counsel,  General  Campbell. 
The  conservative  counsel  insisted  these  papers  had  never  been  before  the 
board.  Opportunity  was  given  to  the  republican  counsel  to  show  the  pa 
pers  had  been  submitted;  but  the  testimony  offered  for  that  purpose  by 
them  so  far,  however,  from  establishing  that  fact,  established  the  reverse. 

On  page  six,  we  find  the  great  howl  of  intimidation  disposed  of  as 
follows : 

Upon  the  general  subject  of  the  state  of  affairs  in  the  south,  and  as 
to  whether  the  alleged  wrongs  to  colored  citizens  for  political  offenses  are 
real  or  were  asserted  without  due  foundation,  your  committee  took  such 
proof  as  the  opportunity  offered.  Both  parties  agreed  upon  four  parishes 
as  samples  of  the  condition  of  affairs  in  that  respect  in  the  state.  Of 
these,  owing  to  the  impossibility  of  procuring  witnesses  from  the  locality 
in  time,  your  committee  were  obliged  to  confine  their  especial  examination 
to  two  parishes  most  accessible.  As  to  these  parishes  they  received  all 
the  testimony  that  was  offered,  and,  in  addition,  they  received  all  the  tes 
timony  that  was  then  on  hand  in  New  Orleans,  offered  by  either  party,  as 
to  the  condition  of  affairs  in  other  parts  of  the  state. 

As  a  whole,  they  are  constrained  to  say  that  the  intention  charged  is 
not  borne  out  by  the  facts  before  us.  No  general  intimidation  of  repub 
lican  voters  was  established ;  no  colored  man  was  produced  who  had  been 
threatened  or  assaulted  by  any  conservative  because  of  political  opinion, 
or  discharged  from  employment  or  refused  employment.  Of  all  those 
who  testified  to  intimidation  there  was  hardly  any  one  who  of  his  own 
knowledge  could  specify  a  reliable  instance  of  such  acts,  and  of  the  white 
men  who  were  produced  to  testify  generally  on  such  subjects,  very  nearly 
all,  if  not  every  single  one,  was  the  holder  of  an  office.  Throughout  the 


SPEECHES  FROM  iSjO  TO  1899.  367 

rural  districts  of  the  state  the  number  of  white  republicans  are  very  few ; 
it  hardly  extends  beyond  those  holding  office  and  those  connected  with 
them.  No  witness,  we  believe,  succeeded  in  naming,  in  any  parish,  five 
republicans  who  supported  the  Kellogg  government  who  were  not  them 
selves  office  holders  or  related  to  office  holders  or  those  having  official  em 
ployment. 

It  is  clearly  shown  here  that  there  was  no  intimidation  as  charged  in 
1874.  Yet  the  democrats  carried  the  state  then,  carried  it  without  any 
intimidation.  If  they  could  carry  the  state  in  1874  without  intimidation, 
why  not  in  i876?  If  the  returning  board  in  1874  falsely  charged  intimi 
dation,  for  the  purpose  of  counting  out  a  democratic  majority,  "arbitra 
rily,  unfairly,  and  without  warrant  of  law,"  why  could  they  not  falsely 
charge  the  same  reason  for  an  arbitrary,  unfair,  and  illegal  count  in  i876? 

Mr.  Speaker,  this  is  too  plain  for  argument,  it  is  too  villainous  to  talk 
about.  And  yet  we  are  asked  to  give  full  faith  and  credit  to  this  false 
count.  We  are  told  that  there  is  no  power  to  go  behind  this  action.  I 
had  always  supposed  that  fraud  made  null  and  void  everything  it  entered 
into. 

But,  sir,  I  shall  go  on  with  this  very  interesting  report.  On  page  six 
we  find  the  following  pertinent  statement : 

On  the  other  hand,  it  was  in  evidence  that  blacks  who  sought  to 
act  with  the  conservative  party,  were,  on  their  part,  sometimes  exposed 
to  enmity  and  abuse.  In  the  interior  one  colored  man  was  shot  for  mak 
ing  a  conservative  speech,  and  in  New  Orleans  it  appeared  from  the  testi 
mony  that  colored  men  who  sought  to  cooperate  with  the  conservatives 
were  subject  to  so  much  abuse  from  the  police  and  otherwise  that  an  asso 
ciation  of  lawyers  volunteered  to  protect  them  but  without  effect. 

The  radical  ox  is  here  gored.  It  is  the  republicans  who  do  the  work 
of  intimidation,  but  I  suppose  the  board  counted  all  the  intimidation  against 
the  democrats  and  all  the  votes  for  republicans. 

But,  sir,  I  shall  pass  on  to  page  seven  of  this  report,  made  by  a  repub 
lican  committee,  of  which  William  A.  Wheeler  was  a  member,  and  unani 
mously  adopted: 

With  this  conviction  is  a  general  want  of  confidence  in  the  integrity 
of  the  existing  state  and  local  officials,  a  want  of  confidence  equally  in  their 
purposes  and  in  their  personnel,  which  is  accompanied  by  the  paralyzation 
of  business  and  destruction  of  values.  The  most  hopeful  witness  pro 
duced  by  the  Kellogg  party,  while  he  declared  that  business  was  in  a 
sounder  condition  than  ever  before,  because  there  was  less  credit,  has  since 
declared  that  "there  was  no  prosperity."  The  securities  of  the  state  have 
fallen  in  two  years  from  7o  or  80  to  25 ;  of  the  city  of  New  Orleans,  from 
80  or  90  to  30  or  40,  while  the  fall  in  bank  shares,  railway  shares,  city  and 
other  corporate  companies  have,  in  a  degree  corresponded.  Throughout 


368 


AN    AMERICAN    COMMONER. 


the  rural  districts  of  the  state  the  negroes,  reared  in  habits  of  reliance  upon 
their  masters  for  support,  and  in  a  community  in  which  the  members  are 
always  ready  to  divide  the  necessaries  of  life  with  each  other,  not  regard 
ing  such  action  as  very  evil,  and  having  immunity  from  punishment  from 
the  nature  of  the  local  officials,  had  come  to  filching  and  stealing  fruit,  veg 
etables,  and  poultry  so  generally — as  Bishop  Wilmarth  stated  without 
contradiction  from  any  source — that  the  raising  of  these  articles  had  to  be 
entirely  abandoned,  to  the  great  distress  of  the  white  people,  while  within 
the  parishes,  as  well  as  in  New  Orleans,  the  taxation  had  been  carried  al 
most  literally  to  the  extent  of  confiscation.  In  New  Orleans  the  assessors 
are  paid  a  commission  for  the  amount  assessed,  and  houses  and  stores  are 
to  be  had  there  for  the  taxes.  In  Natchitochcs,  the  taxation  reached  about 
8  per  cent  of  the  assessed  value  on  the  property.  In  many  parishes  all  the 
white  republicans  and  all  the  office  holders  belong  to  a  single  family.  There 
are  five  of  the  Greens  in  office  in  Lincoln ;  there  are  seven  of  the  Boults  in 
office  in  Natchitoches.  As  the  people  saw  taxation  increase  and  prosperity 
diminish,  as  they  grew  poor  while  officials  grew  rich,  they  became  naturally 
sore.  That  they  love  their  rulers  can  not  be  pretended. 

Here  we  have  it.  The  reason  for  democratic  majorities  in  Louisiana 
is  the  same  as  elsewhere ;  it  is  because  of  their  miserable  government  under 
carpet-bag  rule.  As  the  people  saw  taxation  increase  and  prosperity  di 
minish,  as  they  grew  poor  while  officers  grew  rich,  they  became  naturally 
sore,  yes,  they  became  discontented  and  tired  of  such  government.  There 
is  too  much  of  that  government  in  Louisiana  and  many  other  places, 
where  officers  grow  rich  while  tax  payers  grow  poor.  The  difference  is, 
that  elsewhere  the  tax  payer  has  his  remedy  by  voting  the  democratic 
ticket  or  some  other  ticket,  and  they  turn  out  of  place  these  sleek  officers 
who  are  growing  rich,  fattening  off  the  hard  earnings  of  the  people;  but 
in  Louisiana  troops  and  money  attend  the  count.  The  ballot  avails  not  as 
against  the  rich  officer  holder.  The  beaks  of  corrupt  official  plunderers 
are  plunged  deep  in  the  writhing  flesh  of  the  people.  Troops  and  money 
have  kept  them  down.  Bayonets  have  glistened  in  their  teeth  as  a  warn 
ing  to  be  quiet  while  they  are  being  devoured.  Great  God !  And  all  this 
in  free  America. 

Mr.  Speaker,  I  will  read  one  of  the  last  paragraphs  of  this  report,  for 
it  is  significant.  It  is  as  follows: 

Indeed,  in  our  judgment,  the  substantial  citizens  of  the  state  will  sub 
mit  to  any  fair  determination  of  the  question  of  the  late  elections,  or  do 
anything  by  which  they  can  secure  a  firm  and  good  government.  What 
they  seek  is  peace  and  an  opportunity  for  prosperity ;  to  that  end  they  will 
support  any  form  of  government  that  will  afford  them  just  protection 
in  their  business  and  personal  relations.  In  their  distress  they  have  got 
beyond  any  mere  question  of  political  party.  They  regard  themselves  as 
practically  without  government  and  without  the  power  to  form  one. 


COLORADO  SCENES. 
Photographed  by  Jackson-Smith  Photograph   Co.,  Denver,  Colo. 


SPEECHES    FROM     l8jO    TO     1899.  369 

Now,  sir,  here  is  a  solemn  admission  by  a  republican  committee,  of 
which  William  A.  Wheeler  was  a  member,  that  the  people  of  Louisiana 
want  peace.  They  want  good  government.  I  have  shown  from  this  re 
port  that  they  had  not  a  good  government,  but,  on  the  contrary,  taxes  in 
creased  while  prosperity  waned.  The  people  grew  poor  while  the  officers 
grew  rich.  The  republican  party  failed  to  give  them  good  govern 
ment.  Had  they  not  the  right,  had  they  not  the  duty  to  perform  of 
voting  the  ticket  of  that  party  they  believed  would  give  them  good  govern 
ment?  Was  it  not  the  duty  of  this  returning  board  to  count  that  ticket 
or  ballot  as  it  was  actually  cast  ?  But  troops  and  money,  fraud  and  force, 
stood  in  the  way.  Hayes  must  have  Louisiana.  He  could  not  be  elected 
without  it.  This  simple  fact  accounts  for  many  of  the  supposed  mysteries 
of  the  late  election. 

Mr.  Speaker,  no  one  can  now  look  to  the  5th  of  March  next  with  a 
vision  clear  enough  to  see  who  shall  be  then  inaugurated.  If  Tilden  and 
Hendricks  succeed  at  last,  if  Tilden  then  takes  the  seat  to  which  he  is  in  all 
honesty  and  justice  entitled,  it  will  be  such  a  triumph  of  right  over  wrong, 
of  law  and  order  over  force  and  fraud,  as  will  place  this  republic  on 
firmer  foundations  than  ever  before.  As  a  people,  we  will  enter  the  paths 
of  political  regeneration  and  business  prosperity.  On  the  other  hand,  if 
fraud,  incased  in  legal  forms  and  technical  terms,  thwarts  at  this  time  the 
known  will  of  the  people,  I  believe  a  sense  of  justice  that  always  charac 
terizes  the  American  people  will  set  its  seal  of  condemnation  upon  the 
party  forcing  its  candidates  into  office  against  the  known  merits  of  the 
case. 

I  shall  vote  for  the  bill  providing  for  a  mode  of  counting  the  electoral 
vote,  because  I  hope  it  will  secure  substantial  justice,  and  because,  unless 
that  bill  passes  there  is  no  possibility  of  any  agreement  at  all  between  the 
House  and  the  Senate.  Unless  this  bill  shall  settle  the  dispute  the  presi 
dent  of  the  Senate  will  declare  Hayes  and  Wheeler  elected  and  the  House 
Tilden  and  Hendricks,  thus-  setting  up  a  dual  presidency  and  a  conflict, 
of  authority  that  will  result  in  all  the  horrors  of  civil  conflict,  the  end  of 
which  no  man  can  see  but,  I  venture  to  say  would  be  the  downfall  of  our 
liberties  and  the  end  of  the  world's  hope  of  constitutional  government 
resting  upon  the  freeman's  will  as  expressed  at  the  ballot  box. 


24 


AGAINST  CERNUSCHI  AND   INTERNATIONAL   INTERVEN 
TION  IN  AMERICA. 

(From  a  Speech  in  the  House  of  Representatives,  April  7,  1886.) 

MR.  SPEAKER  :  We  have  the  advice  of  Mr.  Cernuschi  in  last  Sunday's 
Herald  as  to  the  best  way  out  of  our  difficulty.  I  can  not  state  his  propo 
sition  precisely,  but  in  substance  it  is  this :  If  a  free  coinage  bill  should 
fail  to  pass,  or,  having  passed,  should  be  vetoed,  he  proposes  that  we  pur 
chase  silver,  so  much  every  month  and  send  it  to  England;  that  we  pur 
chase  say  $600,000  worth  of  silver  bullion  one  month  and  ship  it  to  Lon 
don,  double  the  amount  the  next  month,  and  so  on  until,  within  the  year, 
we  shall  have  dumped  down  upon  the  London  market  about  $22,000,000 
worth  of  silver  bullion,  selling  it  at  a  lower  rate  every  month,  and  in  that 
way  make  a  panic  in  the  silver  market  and  disturb  the  exchange  between 
Great  Britain  and  India,  so  that  Great  Britain  will  succumb  and  enter  into 
a  pact  with  France  and  the  United  States  for  the  purpose  of  restoring 
silver. 

Now,  if  it  be  true  that  Great  Britain  and  France  and  those  European 
countries  are  getting  cheaper  wheat  and  cotton  from  India  with  this  cheap 
silver,  certainly  that  would  disarrange  nothing.  But  is  that  statesman 
ship;  is  that  sensible?  If  it  is  statesmanship,  if  it  is  sensible,  and  if  Mr. 
Cernuschi  is  so  anxious  to  have  a  pact  with  Great  Britain,  France,  and 
Germany — and  certainly  there  is  some  reason  why  those  countries  should 
have  the  same  money — let  France  and  Mr.  Cernuschi  go  into  the  market 
and  buy  the  silver  and  ship  it  to  England  and  run  the  risk.  That  they  do 
not  do  it  shows  the  fallacy  of  the  argument.  He  says  that  France  has  got 
six  hundred  millions  of  silver  that  she  wants  to  get  rid  of.  If  that  is  so, 
why  not  dump  the  silver  down  on  the  London  market  and  strike  terror 
into  the  Englishmen  and  compel  them  to  submit  to  French  dictation? 
Suppose  this  scheme  should  fail;  suppose  that  (as  we  are  invited  to  do  by 
the  gold  advocates)  we  suspend  silver  coinage,  for  the  purpose  of  shipping 
this  silver  bullion  and  disturbing  the  English  exchange  and  flooding  Eu 
rope  with  cheap  silver  in  order  to  bring  them  to  better  terms — suppose  that 
policy  fails  and  we  find,  after  we  have  demonetized  silver  and  suspended 
its  coinage  and  adopted  this  plan  that  it  does  not  have  the  desired  effect,  in 
what  condition  are  we  left  ? 

37° 


SPEECHES    FROM     l8>JO    TO     1899.  37l 

As  to  Mr.  Cernuschi  and  his  bimetallic  school,  no  matter  which  way 
it  goes  they  have  won.  They  do  not  believe  in  bimetallism  unless  it  can 
be  international  bimetallism;  in  order  to  carry  into  effect  their  particular 
views  upon  the  monetary  question,  they  are  quite  willing  that  the  United 
States  shall  step  into  the  breach  and  suffer  all  the  loss  and  all  the  conse 
quences,  if  their  predictions  and  theories  prove  to  be  fallacious.  Mr. 
Cernuschi  is  certainly  a  gentleman  of  education  and  ability;  there  is  no 
doubt  of  his  being  well  versed  in  financial  questions,  but,  like  other  gentle 
men,  and  probably  myself  among  them,  he  may  be  a  little  inconsistent  at 
times,  and  certainly  he  has  changed  his  views  within  the  past  few  years. 
To  show  this,  I  propose  to  read  an  extract  from  his  statement  before  the 
silver  commission  of  the  United  States  in  i876,  of  which  body  I  was  at  the 
time  a  member. 

Hon.  Mr.  Bogy,  at  that  time  a  senator  from  Missouri,  asked  him  this 
question : 

By  retaining  sixteen  here,  and  fifteen  and  a  half  there  (in  France)  our 
silver  of  course  would  go  right  to  France.  Would  not  that  compel  France 
to  abandon  the  bimetallic  system? 

Answer:  The  policy  of  France  would  be  not  to  coin,  but  to  wait. 
France  committed  a  great  mistake  when  in  1874,  after  the  example  given 
by  Belgium,  she  limited  the  coinage  of  silver.  It  has  been  a  great  mistake. 
If  France  had  continued  to  coin  silver  freely  the  German  silver  would  have 
flowed  into  France  and  some  of  the  gold  of  France  would  have  flowed  into 
Germany,  and  silver  would  have  maintained  everywhere  its  value  rela 
tively  to  gold.  In  limiting  the  mintage  a  difference  has  been  created  be 
tween  the  value  of  bullion  and  the  value  of  coin. 

This,  gentlemen,  is  the  authority  quoted  on  this  floor  by  the  gold  ad 
vocates;  yet  he  insists,  and  it  no  doubt  is  the  fact,  that  had  France  con-r 
tinued  the  free  coinage  of  silver,  there  would  have  been  no  silver  question 
to-day,  because  for  seventy  years — so  long  as  silver  was  coined  free — 
gold  and  silver  were  at  a  parity  at  the  French  ratio  of  15  1-2  to  I.  This  is 
Mr.  Cernuschi's  statement,  notwithstanding  he  has  made  a  different  and 
inconsistent  statement  in  a  little  pamphlet  which  we  have  all  had  occasion 
no  doubt  to  read,  copies  having  been  sent  to  us  by  Mr.  Manton  Marble, 
called  "The  Great  Metallic  Powers." 

Now,  if  it  be  true  that  France  by  continuing  the  free  coinage  of  silver 
could  have  maintained  the  parity  between  the  two  metals,  what  may  we  ex 
pect  by  free  coinage  in  the  United  States  ?  Why,  Mr.  Speaker,  we  have  a 


372 


AN    AMERICAN    COMMONER. 


bimetallic  union  of  our  own.  Under  a  bimetallic  constitution  we  have  a 
bimetallic  union  consisting  of  thirty-eight  states  in  addition  to  the  territo 
ries.  This  bimetallic  union  includes  a  population  of  60,000,000,  and  an 
area  of  over  3,000,000  square  miles,  embracing  2,000,000,000  acres  of  land. 
Here  is  a  bimetallic  union  compared  with  which  the  Latin  union  is  a  mere 
bagatelle  so  far  as  the  resources  of  the  future  are  concerned.  Having  a 
population  of  60,000,000,  increasing  at  the  rate  of  1,000,000  annually 
spread  over  this  vast  area,  before  we  could  coin  the  quantity  of  silver  that 
France  has  to-day  we  would  have  a  population  probably  as  large  as  or 
larger  than  that  of  the  Latin  Union,  whose  territory  compared  with  ours  is 
insignificant. 


MAKESHIFTS  AND  COMPROMISES. 

(From  a  Speech  in  the  House  of  Representatives,  January  8,  1895.) 

All  your  makeshifts  are  but  a  fraud  and  a  sham.  I  believe  that  the 
American  people  will  soon  understand  this,  if  they  do  not  now.  It 
may  take  a  few  years  more  of  hard  times,  of  grinding  poverty,  a  few  more 
bank  failures,  to  teach  them  this  lesson.  And  as  my  distinguished  friend 
from  Pennsylvania  (Mr.  Sibley)  has  said  in  his  speech  to-day,  the  men 
who  have  heretofore  enjoyed  the  profits  of  this  increased  value  of  their 
securities  are  to-day  becoming  very  much  alarmed  on  account  of  the 
shrinkage  of  value  of  the  property  or  wealth  on  which  these  securities  are 
resting.  Take  your  railroad  securities.  Half  of  your  railroads  are  to-day 
in  the  hands  of  receivers.  I  do  not  like  to  allude  to  this  railroad  question 
just  now,  and  will  not  do  so  for  the  purpose  of  giving  offense  to  any  mem 
bers  of  this  house. 

You  undertook  recently  to  save  the  railroad  monopolies  from  the 
effects  of  the  single  gold  standard  and  by  permitting  them  to  pool,  to  go 
into  trusts.  Why  was  that  done?  Simply  because  the  shrinkage  of  the 
value  of  their  earnings  and  their  securities  was  bankrupting  those  corpora 
tions,  and  they  came  here  for  relief.  All  the  banking  and  railroad  monop 
olies  and  their  trusts  come  here  to  be  saved.  The  tariff  barons  and  all  of 
them  come,  each  and  everyone  seeking,  by  means  of  legislation  at  the  hands 


SPEECHES  FROM  1870  TO  1899.  373 

of  congress,  to  escape  the  crash  that  is  coming  in  the  future,  by  being  made 
the  preferred  pets  of  congress. 

Mr.  Chairman,  in  the  name  of  an  outraged  democracy  I  protest 
against  the  whole  proceeding.  I  have  been  a  democrat  all  my  life,  and 
expect  to  live  and  die  one,  battling  for  the  principles  of  that  great  party. 
I  believe  them  to  be  essential  to  the  perpetuity  of  the  republic.  I  have 
seen  them  trampled  on  here  day  by  day  and  month  by  month.  But  this 
House  is  not  the  democratic  party.  Neither  is  this  administration  the 
democratic  party.  (Laughter  and  applause.)  I  will  appeal  from  this 
presence  to  that  vast  yeomanry  of  this  country,  the  great  masses  of  the  peo 
ple,  and  I  hope  that  there  will  be  a  sufficiency  of  the  democratic  party  to 
rally  around  the  great  principles  of  democracy,  therefore,  in  the  coming 
days  and  reorganize  the  party  on  the  principles  of  Jefferson  and  Jackson, 
and  go  back  to  the  ancient  days  and  landmarks  on  which  the  party  has 
grown  and  prospered  and  made  this  country  great  and  happy. 


LAWS  TO  PROTECT  THE  STRONG  AGAINST  THE  WEAK. 

(From  a  Speech  in  the  House  of  Representatives,  January  25,  1883. 

The  law  is  usually  made  for  the  strong,  when  it  ought  to  be  made  for 
the  protection  of  the  weak.  We  respond  to  the  demands  of  capital  and 
legislate  for  the  protection  of  capital  rather  than  the  protection  of  the 
laboring  man  and  the  poor.  When  the  laboring  man  of  this  country  is 
taught  to  believe  that  he  must  rely  upon  congressional  legislation,  upon 
tariff  bills  to  protect  him,  he  is  relying  upon  a  broken  reed  and  taught  a 
dangerous  doctrine,  because  all  the  legislation  of  congress  for  the  last 
twenty  years  has  confessedly  been  in  the  interest  of  capital  and  against 
labor.  To-day  I  can  look  around  me  and  see  in  these  galleries,  in  this 
lobby,  in  these  corridors,  the  agents  and  attorneys  of  these  millionaire  man 
ufacturers  and  corporations,  who  are  here  pressing  the  passage  of  this  bill 
in  their  interest,  although  it  is  death  to  the  laboring  interests  of  the  country. 
You  can  scarcely  leave  one  of  your  committee  rooms  to  come  into  this 
chamber  without  being  jostled  from  your  path  by  this  eager  crowd.  To 
day  they  are  swarming  in  this  city,  the  hotels  are  full  of  them.  The  news- 


374 


AN    AMERICAN    COMMONER. 


papers  are  publishing  everywhere  the  fact  that  the  lobby  is  here  to-day  in 
greater  force  than  ever  before.  Lobbyists  of  whom?  Of  the  farmer  and 
the  laboring  man  ?  Oh,  no.  It  is  these  millionaires  who  are  demanding  the 
passage  of  this  bill  for  the  purpose  of  enslaving  and  crushing  labor  — of 
building  up  monopolies.  This  bill  is  full  of  "infant  industries."  These  in 
fants,  being  of  royal  birth,  are  to  be  born  and  bred  millionaires.  In  a  few 
years  they  will  grow  to  lusty  manhood,  full-grown  millionaire  cormorants. 

As  I  before  stated,  we  are  dependent  upon  the  soil  for  all  the  wealth 
of  this  country.  That  which  might  encourage  the  tilling  of  the  soil  would 
be  to  the  interest  of  the  laboring  man  and  all  concerned.  Why  ?  Because 
the  price  of  labor  depends  upon  the  wage  capital,  the  wealth  to  be  invested 
in  wages.  The  wealth  to  be  invested  in  wages,  which  keeps  up  the  price  of 
labor,  is  that  wealth  which  comes  from  the  soil,  that  keeps  up  all  prices 
and  all  business  industries.  When  we  diminish  that  and  legislate  against 
it  we  destroy  the  wealth  and  the  capital  or  wage  fund  to  be  invested  in 
labor,  and  to  this  extent  we  destroy  or  reduce  the  price  of  labor. 

I  can  illustrate  some  of  the  workings  of  the  present  tariff  system  with 
regard  to  labor  by  referring  to  the  "strike"  a  few  years  ago.  One  of  the 
great  difficulties  of  congressional  legislation,  with  reference  to  the  business 
of  the  country,  is  its  tendency  to  build  up  monopolies,  to  legislate  in  favor 
of  the  rich  as  against  the  poor.  Under  the  stimulus  of  a  high  protective 
tariff  we  find  that  capital  rushes  into  these  protected  branches  of  industry. 
They  go  on  for  awhile  at  a  large  profit,  but  finally  they  ascertain  that  they 
have  manufactured  beyond  the  demands  of  the  market.  They  have  crip 
pled  agriculture  by  reducing  its  profits.  They  have  reduced  the  opportu 
nities  for  a  market  and  the  amount  of  wealth  to  be  invested  in  wages. 
What  do  they  do  under  these  circumstances  ?  Why,  sir,  we  are  told  that 
sometimes  one  factory  will  buy  out  another  or  pay  it  to  stop  a  short  time — 
for  five  or  six  months,  or  probably  they  will  all  shut  down  and  wait  awhile 
until  prices  rise.  Meanwhile  the  laborers  are  turned  out  of  employment. 
Thus  instead  of  the  laborer  working  the  year  round,  as  he  might  do  on  a 
farm,  he  is  employed  only  five  or  six  months  in  a  year  or  not  quite  so  long, 
and  during  the  remainder  of  the  year  is  idle.  The  manufacturer,  however, 
retains  his  wares  and  refuses  to  place  them  upon  the  market,  in  order  to 
maintain  his  prices  and  his  profits. 

We  had  an  illustration  of  the  working  of  this  system  when  the  strike 
occurred  a  few  years  ago— when  the  city  of  Pittsburg  was  almost  laid  in 
ashes — when  from  one  end  of  the  country  to  the  other  state  governments 


SPEECHES    FROM    iS^O    TO     1899.  375 

were  called  upon  to  summon  out  their  troops  to  put  down  mobs,  and  even 
the  Federal  government  was  appealed  to  to  shoot  down  starving  laborers 
who  had  been  turned  out  of  employment.  What  did  these  laborers  do? 
They  came  to  our  western  country  as  "tramps,"  so-called ;  they  came  there 
to  get  bread  which  had  been  refused  them  by  these  monopolists  and  manu 
facturers.  They  went  from  door  to  door.  They  obtained  bread,  and  fin 
ally  obtained  labor.  Many  of  them  to-day  are  prosperous  farmers  on  our 
western  prairies.  But  the  monopolists  follow  them  there  and  by  protective 
tariffs  rob  them  to  further  swell  their  own  profits 

To  sum  up,  protection  does  not  increase  the  wage  of  labor,  but  de 
creases  its  profits.  These  bounties  or  advantages  are  first  utilized  by  cap 
italists.  They  are  in  a  position  immediately  to  avail  themselves  of  the 
favorable  situation  and  at  once  accumulate  large  fortunes.  Thus  being 
made  strong  and  powerful,  they  are  able  to  dominate  and  control  the  home 
market.  Poor  men  or  laborers  can  not  become  proprietors,  because  capi 
tal  has  beforehand  absorbed  these  bounties.  They  crush  out  all  competi 
tion  at  home  by  their  sudden  wealth  and  prevent  all  competition  from 
abroad  by  legal  enactments.  In  this  manner  they  dictate  prices  and  levy 
tribute  upon  consumers  and  fix  prices  for  the  laborer  so  low  as  to  make  him 
a  mere  slave  for  whatever  his  wages  may  be.  His  cost  of  living  is  so  great 
that  he  has  nothing  at  the  end  of  the  year. 

Protection  is  a  species  of  robbery  perpetrated  on  the  farmer,  because 
the  farmer  is  taxed  to  swell  the  profits  of  the  manufacturer.  Protection 
compels  the  farmer  to  buy  of  the  protected  manufacturer  at  the  price  fixed 
by  the  conscience  of  the  manufacturer,  for  law  has  prevented  foreign  com 
petition,  and  the  advantages  this  law  gives  have  enabled  a  few  rich  compa 
nies  to  control  the  home  market  to  the  exclusion  of  the  competition  the 
poor  manufacturer  would  give  if  he  was  not  crushed  out  by  powerful  and 
rich  corporations.  That  is  to  say,  a  company  of  poor  laborers  might  or 
ganize  for  the  purpose  of  carrying  on  business  for  themselves;  but  they 
would  soon  find  that  their  neighbor  who  had  already  grown  rich  through 
protection,  and  who  understood  the  law  and  could  have  the  law  changed  to 
suit  him,  would  bankrupt  the  laborers  who  had  presumed  to  compete  with 
these  barons. 

All  wealth  comes  primarily  from  the  soil.  Two  total  failures  of  crops 
succeeding  each  other  would  bankrupt  the  country ;  would  put  out  the  fires 
in  the  engine  and  the  furnace;  would  throw  all  labor  out  of  employment 
and  bring  starvation  to  our  doors.  This  proves  that  the  soil  is  the  origin 


376  AN    AMERICAN    COMMONER. 

of  all  real  wealth.  It  takes  wealth  to  pay  for  labor.  The  more  wealth  we 
have  the  greater  the  wage  fund ;  the  greater  the  wage  fund  the  greater  will 
be  the  price  of  wages.  Whatever,  therefore,  decreases  the  profits  of  the 
farm  decreases  the  wage  fund  and  thereby  decreases  the  price  of  wages. 


STOCK  JOBBING  CONTROL  OF  THE  TREASURY. 

(From  a  Speech  Delivered  in  the  House  of  Representatives,  February  25,  1893.) 

MR.  CHAIRMAN  :  It  will  be  observed  that  before  the  resumption  law 
went  into  effect  in  1879,  the  congress  of  the  United  States  had  passed  an  act 
known  popularly  as  the  Bland-Allison  act,  restoring  the  silver  dollar. 
That  was  in  February,  i878,  nearly  one  year  before  the  resumption  was  to 
operate.  That  act  provided  that  that  dollar  should  be  a  legal  tender  for 
all  debts  public  and  private,  except  where  the  contract  otherwise  stipulated, 
and  it  is  as  much  a  resumption  fund,  under  the  laws  of  this  country,  as  the 
gold  dollar  for  the  greenbacks  and  all  other  currency  in  this  country  not 
specifically  payable  by  contract  in  gold. 

We  are  told,  Mr.  Chairman,  that  our  difficulties  to-day  arise  on  ac 
count  of  what  is  called  the  Sherman  act.  I  am  not  in  favor  of  the  Sherman 
act,  and  never  was.  I  did  not  believe  at  the  time  it  would  accomplish  the 
purpose  for  which  it  was  enacted.  I  believed  when  that  act  was  passed  that 
we  would  have  the  very  difficulties  we  have  to-day,  because  it  limited  the 
coinage  of  silver  bullion  purchased  to  the  discretion  of  the  secretary  of  the 
treasury. 

Again,  it  declared  that  the  secretary  of  the  treasury  could  use 
gold,  in  his  discretion,  in  redeeming  the  notes  used  in  the  purchase  of  sil 
ver  bullion.  And  to-day  what  have  we?  Notes  issued  for  the  purchase 
of  silver  bullion  are  held  to  be  exclusively  gold  notes.  They  are  being 
redeemed  in  gold  and  thus  depleting  the  gold  in  the  treasury,  instead  of 
paying  them  as  they  ought  to  to  be  paid  and  as  the  law  contemplated  they 
should  be  paid,  by  the  coinage  of  the  bullion  purchased.  That  is  one  of  the 
vices  that  I  see  in  giving  the  secretary  of  the  treasury  the  power  to  pay  in 
gold  the  notes  issued  under  the  Sherman  act. 

Mr.  Chairman,  we  are  now  told  that  that  act  is  alone  responsible  for 
the  depletion  of  the  gold  in  the  treasury.  But  let  us  think  for  a  moment. 


SPEECHES    FROM     1870    TO     1899.  377 

Since  that  act  was  passed,  if  my  memory  serves  me  correctly,  we  have 
paid  about  $250,000,000  of  public  debt,  and  that  has  gone  far  to  deplete  the 
treasury  of  its  gold.  Since  the  passage  of  that  act,  the  congress  of  the 
United  States  has  increased  our  appropriations  from  about  $800,000,000 
every  two  years  to  over  a  thousand  millions  in  every  two  years ;  and  by  the 
extraordinary  appropriations  of  congress  the  Federal  treasury  is  drained 
of  all  its  money,  gold,  silver,  and  greenbacks;  and  they  are  scraping  the 
tills,  I  am  told,  now  for  the  subsidiary  coinage. 

Now,  that  is  the  objection  I  have  to  the  proposition.  I  am  not  wil 
ling  to  sell  bonds  for  the  purpose  of  putting  into  the  treasury  sufficient 
money  to  run  the  government  in  its  ordinary  expenses;  but  what  I  want 
here  is  to  reduce  the  appropriations  of  the  public  money  so  as  to  have  means 
to  resume  or  to  provide  that  the  surplus  revenues  shall  become  a  surplus 
fund,  and  let  it  go  into  the  treasury  for  that  purpose,  and  not  be  drained 
out  by  extravagant  appropriations  of  congress.  There  is  our  objection. 

First,  the  Sherman  law  that  provided  silver  certificates  should  be  paid 
by  gold  certificates;  second,  the  extraordinary  appropriations  of  congress 
that  have  drained  the  treasury  of  all  its  reserve  except  that  set  apart  by 
the  act  of  1882.  Are  you  going  to  submit  to  that,  Mr.  Chairman?  Now, 
you  may  as  well,  as  I  have  said  awhile  ago,  take  $50,000,000  of  your  gold 
and  buy  bonds,  and  those  bonds  could  be  paid  for  again  by  $50,000,000  of 
silver  certificates. 

Take  for  instance  the  New  York  Clearing  House  Association,  which 
is  so  closely  connected  with  the  treasury  department  that  that  department 
always  keeps  an  agent  there  to  deal  with  the  Clearing  House  Association. 
Now,  suppose  these  associated  bankers  take  $50,000,000  of  bonds,  pay  the 
gold  into  the  United  States  treasury,  and  next  day  present  greenbacks  or 
bullion  notes  and  draw  out  this  same  gold.  These  legal  tender  notes  thus 
paid  in  for  gold  become  surplus  revenues  in  the  Federal  treasury  and  can 
be  paid  in  the  ordinary  expenses  of  the  government,  so  that  you  are  not 
holding  the  proper  amount  in  reserve,  but  making  a  way  to  increase  the 
bonded  debt  of  the  government  for  no  other  purpose  than  to  pay  out  the 
extravagant  appropriations  made  by  the  Federal  congress. 

I  do  not  know  whether  this  amendment  is  intended  for  that,  or  what  it 
is  intended  for.  I  do  not  know  whether  it  means  that  the  treasury  has  been 
so  depleted  that  they  have  not  money  enough  to  run  this  government  and 
pay  its  ordinary  expenditure  until  congress  meets  again,  and  that  therefore 
it  is  necessary  to  get  funds  in  this  way,  or  whether  it  is  meant  to  prop  up 


378 


AN    AMERICAN    COMMONER. 


stocks  in  New  York  and  convince  Europe  that  we  are  financially  sound. 
We  all  remember  that  about  a  month  ago  we  were  threatened  with  a  finan 
cial  panic  in  Wall  street. 

Stocks  were  running  down,  especially  the  trust  stocks,  the  sugar 
trust,  the  lead,  the  cordage  trust,  all  the  various  trusts  and  combinations 
which  are  organized  conspiracies  against  the  free  trade  and  commerce  of 
this  country  for  the  purpose  of  putting  up  commodities  against  the  interest 
of  the  people,  the  combinations  that  have  watered  their  stocks  and  desire  to 
maintain  them  at  high  prices.  They  desire  this  legislation,  and  they  may 
succeed  in  maintaining  those  watered  stocks  at  high  prices  if  they  can 
induce  the  Federal  treasury  to  load  itself  up  with  gold  so  as  to  satisfy  Eu 
rope,  I  suppose,  that  there  is  no  danger  but  that  the  interest  will  be  paid 
in  gold. 

In  that  way  they  can  float  their  inflated  stocks  and  thereby  doubly 
rob  the  people  of  this  country.  (Applause.)  Take  the  Reading  Railroad, 
which  formed  its  combinations,  a  syndicate  of  roads  and  monopolies,  with 
its  large  coal  fields,  with  its  coal  and  iron  trusts,  with  its  endeavor  to  put 
up  the  price  of  coal  to  the  great  detriment  of  the  suffering  poor  of  this 
country,  that  combination  got  into  trouble.  How  ?  Through  the  inflated 
stocks  and  their  rascally  manipulation  of  the  money  market.  They  were 
threatened  with  a  slump  in  their  stocks  and  they  came  here  to  Washington. 

They  did,  I  believe,  induce  the  secretary  of  the  treasury  to  go  to  New 
York  to  investigate  the  matter,  a,nd,  if  current  history  is  true,  they  induced 
him  to  believe  that  an  issue  of  bonds  was  necessary  in  order  to  prevent  a 
financial  panic,  but  when  the  matter  was  submitted  to  the  president  of  the 
United  States  he  simply  put  his  foot  upon  it.  And,  although  I  differ  with 
the  president  of  the  United  States  in  politics  and  as  to  a  great  many  of  his 
public  measures,  yet  I  say  that  in  that  instance  he  did  exhibit  that  integ 
rity  of  heart  and  that  backbone  which  this  house  ought  to  emulate  and  to 
follow.  (Applause.) 

He  refused,  and  if  current  history  is  true,  he  assigned  as  the  ground  of 
his  refusal  that  this  was  a  mere  stock- jobbing  operation,  and  the  conse 
quence  was  that  the  Reading  Railroad,  with  its  inflated  stocks,  went  to  the 
wall, — where  it  ought  to  go,  and  where  all  these  stocks  that  have  been 
watered  and  inflated  and  all  these  combinations  organized  to  rob  the  peo 
ple  of  this  country  ought  to  go,  and  will  go  if  the  congress  of  the  United 
States  refuses  to  come  to  their  relief  by  issuing  gold  bonds. 

And  I  stand  here,  Mr.  Chairman,  to  appeal  to  the  patriotism  of  this 


SPEECHES    FROM    1870    TO     1899.  379 

House.  I  appeal  to  you  gentlemen  upon  this  floor,  if  you  are  opposed  to 
organized  trusts,  to  inflated  stocks  and  to  a  gold  trust,  I  appeal  to  you  to 
stand  as  men  against  this  scheme  of  Wall  street.  When  the  elections  come 
round  we  go  home  to  our  constituents,  and  to  them  we  are  in  the  habit  of 
denouncing  trusts  and  the  inflation  and  watering  of  stocks ;  we  talk  to  them 
about,  fifteen,  twenty,  or  thirty  thousand  men  in  this  country  owning  the 
great  mass  of  the  wealth  of  the  country,  but  when  we  come  back  here  we 
seem  to  get  into  a  different  atmosphere  altogether. 

When  we  go  home  and  face  the  free  people,  the  toiling  masses  of  this 
country,  who  have  to  bear  these  enormous  burdens;  when  we  appeal  to 
them  for  their  support  we  are  their  friends,  and  we  remain  so  until  after 
the  election;  but  when  we  come  here  to  Washington  we  get  under  the 
shadow  of  Wall  street — we  get  into  poisoned  atmosphere  that  fills  these 
lobbies  with  the  gamblers  of  Wall  street,  demanding  all  possible  kinds  of 
legislation  in  their  own  interest.  We  are  told  that  we  are  to  have  a  panic ; 
we  are  told  that  we  must  come  to  the  rescue,  and,  I  am  sorry  to  say,  that, 
forgetting  the  interests  of  the  great  people  who  send  us  here  and  the  prom 
ises  that  we  have  made  to  them,  we  bow  the  knee  to  the  golden  Baal,  and, 
so  help  me  God,  I  hope  that  every  man  who  does  it  will  be  remembered  by 
his  people  when  he  again  asks  their  votes ! 


AGAINST  BANK  NOTES  AND  FIAT  PAPER. 

(From  a  Speech  Delivered  in  the  House  of  Representatives,  June  22,  1882.) 

I  propose  to  allude  to  what  I  conceive  to  be  the  difference  between 
the  greenback  theory  of  money — and  what  I  mean  by  the  greenback  theory 
of  money  is  fiat  paper  money — and  those  who  hold  to  the  doctrine  that  all 
paper  money  issued  by  the  government  should  be  made  redeemable  — that  is 
to  say,  when  the  government  issues  paper  money  it  should  make  it  legal 
tender  for  public  debts,  should  make  it  a  promise  to  pay,  make  it  redeem 
able  in  coin,  and  make  it  convertible  or  redeemable  in  the  money  of  the 
government.  That  I  take  it  to  be  the  democratic  doctrine,  because  it  was 
so  declared  in  their  Cincinnati  platform. 

In  that  platform  the  democrats  declared  that  gold  and  silver  coin  and 
paper  convertible  into  coin  should  constitute  the  money  of  the  government, 


380  AN    AMERICAN    COMMONER. 

and  it  will  be  noticed  here  that  the  democrats  in  that  platform  expressed 
themselves  fairly  and  squarely  in  favor  of  silver  as  well  as  gold  whereas 
the  republican  party  demonetized  silver.  In  their  national  platform  they 
never  declared  themselves  in  favor  of  silver ;  but,  on  the  contrary,  the  sec 
retary  of  the  treasury,  the  president,  members  of  the  House  and  Senate,  in 
fact  the  majority  of  the  leading  republicans  are  opposed  to  silver  and  in 
favor  of  gold,  and  they  reported  to  the  House  under  the  advice  of  the  secre 
tary  of  the  treasury  a  bill  to  stop  the  coinage  of  silver.  So  that  the  republi 
can  party  is  a  gold  and  national-bank  party ;  on  the  other  hand,  the  demo 
cratic  party  is  in  favor  of  silver  as  well  as  gold  and  of  paper  that  is  convert 
ible  into  coin  and  has  a  promise  to  pay.  The  greenback  party  is  in  favor  of 
what  they  call  fiat  paper  money,  paper  money  that  is  not  redeemable  or 
convertible  into  coin,  that  has  no  promise  to  pay  and  no  redemption  to 
support  it.  It  is  this  sort  of  money  that  they  propose  to  compel  the  busi 
ness  interests  of  the  country  to  take,  to  compel  the  plow-holder  to  take,  but 
not  the  bondholder. 

Now,  what  is  the  difference  between  a  piece  of  paper  stamped  by  the 
government  as  money  resting  upon  act  of  congress  that  declares  it  shall 
be  received  as  a  legal  tender  for  all  debts  public  and  private,  but  having 
no  promise  of  redemption  or  convertibility,  and  a  piece  of  paper  that  is 
made  receivable  for  all  public  debts,  or,  if  you  please,  for  all  public  and  pri 
vate  duties  and  which  also  has  a  promise  of  redemption  or  convertibility 
upon  its  face  like  our  present  greenbacks  ? 

Our  present  greenback  dollar  is  not  only  legal  tender,  but  it  is  a  prom 
issory  note  of  the  government.  You  will  read  upon  it  the  words  "The 
United  States  will  pay  to  bearer  one  dollar."  There  is  a  promise  to  pay. 
It  is  more  than  a  fiat  paper  dollar  or  legal  tender.  It  is  a  promise  of  the 
government  that  it  will  pay  this  dollar  in  whatever  may  be  money  at  the 
time  for  redemption,  impliedly  in  coin.  Hence  it  is  the  money  contemplated 
in  the  democratic  platform.  It  is  convertible  paper  money — a  promise  to 
pay.  All  the  wealth  of  the  government  is  pledged  to  make  this  a  good  dol 
lar.  The  faith  of  the  nation  is  expressed  upon  the  face  of  it  in  the  words 
"The  United  States  will  pay  to  bearer  one  dollar."  So  that  if  the  act  of 
congress  be  repealed  that  makes  it  a  legal  tender,  it  is  still  a  demand  against 
the  government  for  a  dollar,  and  is  good  money,  because  the  faith  of  the 
nation  is  written  upon  it  that  the  government  will  redeem  it  and  pay  a  dol 
lar  for  it ;  and  should  congress  to-day  repeal  the  legal  tender  act,  or  should 
the  Supreme  Court  of  the  United  States  decide  it  not  competent  for 


SPEECHES    FROM     iSjO    TO    1899.  381 

congress  to  make  it  a  legal  tender  in  time  of  peace,  it  still  would  be  good 
money,  because  the  government  has  promised  to  redeem  it  and  to  make  it 
good,  and  it  is  a  demand  against  the  government. 

The  good  faith  of  the  government  must  respond  to  it,  and  it  will  be 
redeemed  by  the  government  in  whatever  is  money  at  the  time,  whether 
gold  or  silver  or  otherwise.  But  the  fiat  paper  dollar  is  not  a  promise  to 
pay;  it  has  no  promise  of  the  government  upon  it  to  redeem  it,  but  rests 
solely  upon  an  act  of  congress  that  declares  this  piece  of  paper  stamped 
as  a  dollar  shall  be  a  legal  tender  for  all  debts,  public  and  private. 
Should  congress  pass  such  an  act  and  issue,  say  fifty  million  dollars  of 
this  money,  and  it  should  go  into  circulation,  my  greenback  friends  would 
tell  their  constituents,  "This  is  all  good  money,  good  as  gold,  good  as  sil 
ver;  it  has  been  issued  by  the  government,  stamped  by  the  government, 
like  a  piece  of  gold  or  a  piece  of  silver,  and  therefore  is  as  valuable  as 
metals."  Their  constituents  believe  this  doctrine. 

One  of  them,  Mr.  A,  for  instance,  sells  his  farm  or  other  property  for 
ten,  fifteen  or  twenty  thousand  dollars  of  this  money.  He  lays  away  his 
money,  not  having  immediate  use  for  it.  He  relies  upon  it  as  being  as  good 
as  the  gold  and  silver  the  greenbackers  have  told  him  it  was.  He  ex 
pects  his  money  to  be  distributed  at  some  time  for  the  benefit  of  his  family. 
He  makes  his  will  at  his  death;  so  much  shall  be  given  to  John,  so  much 
to  Tom,  and  so  on.  But  the  next  election  comes  around ;  the  congress  is 
elected  that  is  opposed  to  fiat  money.  They  repeal  the  act  of  congress 
making  it  a  legal  tender;  consequently  it  is  no  longer  money.  It  can  no 
longer  pay  a  debt,  and  no  one  will  receive  it  for  any  purpose  whatever. 
It  is  worthless  paper.  It  was  created  by  an  act  of  congress;  it  was  de 
stroyed  by  the  same  power  that  made  it.  The  government  has  not  prom 
ised  to  redeem  it,  so  that  the  owner  of  the  money,  if  he  goes  to  the  treasury 
or  elsewhere  and  demands  its  payment,  is  told  that  there  is  nothing  upon 
the  face  of  it  which  promises  its  payment.  Consequently,  the  faith  of  the 
government  is  not  written  upon  it  and  no  promise  of  the  government  is 
connected  with  it. 

It  rested  solely  upon  an  act  of  congress  which  declared  it  to  be  a  legal 
tender,  and  when  the  act  was  repealed  it  was  no  longer  of  any  validity,  so 
that  this  bequest  that  was  made  to  Mr.  A/s  children  proved  to  be  a  delusion 
and  a  snare,  and  instead  of  his  being  worth  $15,000,  which  the  heirs  should 
have  received  as  a  legacy,  they  received  so  much  waste  paper.  And  this 
is  the  sort  of  money  that  our  greenback  friends  propose  that  the  plow- 


282  AN    AMERICAN    COMMONER. 

holder  should  lake,  when,  in  the  same  breath,  they  declare  that  the  bond 
holder  is  to  have  coin. 

Now,  it  so  happens  with  gold  and  silver  that  they  are  precious  metals, 
and  made  so  by  the  consent  and  usage  of  the  civilized  world.  They  find 
their  utility  as  money  throughout  the  world  and  in  the  arts.  So  that  if  con 
gress  to-day  should  declare  that  neither  gold  nor  silver  should  be  a  legal 
tender  in  the  payment  of  debts  in  this  government  it  might  slightly  de 
preciate  their  value,  but  they  would  be  money  all  over  the  world  the  same 
as  they  are  money  now.  The  business  man  who  had  a  piece  of  gold  or  a 
piece  of  silver  in  the  bank  that  was  declared  no  longer  money  by  this  gov 
ernment  could  go  to  his  merchant  and  make  his  purchase  with  it  the  same 
as  with  his  wheat,  or  his  corn,  or  other  products,  for  that  merchant  would 
take  it  to  the  money  centers  of  New  York,  or  other  cities,  and  purchase  all 
of  his  goods  there  with  gold  and  silver;  because  the  merchant  in  New 
York  could  go  to  London  and  Paris  and  use  this  gold  and  silver  in  all  of 
his  purchases  made  there  of  goods,  stores,  and  merchandise  that  we  use 
here,  for  in  that  country  it  would  be  the  only  money  by  which  he  could 
make  these  purchases.  So  that  we  see  that  gold  and  silver  is  international 
money  by  consent  of  mankind. 

We  demonetize  these  metals  here  and  they  will  be  shipped  abroad  the 
same  as  other  products  and  bring  in  return  their  value.  Practically 
speaking,  the  man  who  owns  a  silver  dollar  or  a  gold  dollar,  if  it  were 
demonetized  here,  would  simply  ship  it  to  Europe  and  get  a  dollar's  worth 
for  it,  but  no  one  would  pretend  to  say  that  he  could  do  so  with  a  piece  of 
paper  that  had  nothing  upon  it  but  the  stamp  of  the  government ;  and  the 
act  of  congress  declaring  it  to  be  money  having  been  repealed,  no  one 
would  pretend  to  say  that  such  a  piece  of  paper  as  that  would  be  worth 
anything  here  or  elsewhere.  So  we  see  the  distinction  between  the  fiat 
paper  dollar  and  the  fiat  of  the  government  stamped  upon  gold  and  silver. 
One  has  an  international,  world-wide  intrinsic  value,  the  other  has  a  value 
given  to  it  solely  by  an  act  of  congress,  and  when  that  act  of  congress  is 
repealed  the  value  is  repealed  and  goes  with  it. 

I  make  these  illustrations  for  the  purpose  of  showing  the  difference 
between  a  treasury  note  that  is  redeemable  by  the  government,  a  treasury 
note  as  contemplated  by  the  democratic  platform,  and  a  fiat  paper  dollar  as 
contemplated  by  the  greenback  platform. 

Our  greenback  friends  rest  their  doctrine  of  fiat  money  upon  the  deci 
sion  of  the  supreme  court  in  the  legal  tender  cases,  in  which  they  say 


SPEECHES  FROM  1870  TO  1899.  383 

that  the  supreme  court  decides  that  congress  has  a  right  to  issue  a  piece  of 
paper  and  stamp  it  as  a  dollar  and  make  it  a  legal  tender.  The  supreme 
court  in  the  legal  tender  cases,  as  is  well  known  by  those  who  have  read 
them  carefully,  rested  their  decision  mainly  upon  the  ground  of  public 
necessity  existing  during  the  war,  and  that  it  was  a  war  measure,  and  as 
such  congress  had  the  right  to  stamp  a  piece  of  paper,  to  issue  a  promise 
to  pay  a  dollar  and  make  it  a  legal  tender  the  same  as  the  dollar  promised. 
They  did  not  decide  that  congress  had  the  right  to  stamp  a  piece  of  paper 
the  same  as  gold  and  silver  and  make  it  a  legal  tender  for  private  debts. 
The  following  extract  from  that  decision  shows  the  position  of  the  supreme 
court : 

It  is  said  there  can  be  no  uniform  standard  of  weights  without  weights 
or  of  measures  without  length  or  space,  and  we  are  asked  how  anything  can 
be  made  a  uniform  standard  of  value  which  has  itself  no  value?  This  is 
a  question  foreign  to  the  subject  before  us.  The  legal  tender  acts  do  not  at 
tempt  to  make  paper  a  standard  of  value;  we  do  not  rest  their  validity  upon 
the  assertion  that  their  emission  is  coinage  or  any  regulation  of  the  value  of 
money;  nor  do  we  assert  that  congress  may  make  anything  which  has  no 
value  money.  What  we  do  assert  is  that  congress  has  power  to  enact 
that  the  government's  promise  to  pay  money  shall  be  for  the  time  being 
equivalent  in  value  to  the  representative  of  value  determined  by  the  coin 
age  acts  or  to  multiples  thereof. 

It  will  be  observed  by  this  extract  that  the  courts  say : 

We  do  not  rest  their  validity  upon  the  assertion  that  their  emission 
is  coinage,  or  any  regulation  of  the  value  of  money,  nor  do  we  assert  that 
Congress  may  make  anything  which  has  no  value  money.  What  we  do 
assert  is  that  Congress  has  power  to  enact  that  the  government's  promise 
to  pay  money  shall  be  for  the  time  being  equivalent  in  value  to  the  repre 
sentative  of  value  determined  by  the  coinage  acts  or  to  multiples  thereof. 

In  short  the  supreme  court  simply  declares  that  the  Government's 
promise  to  pay  a  dollar  can,  by  an  act  of  congress,  be  made  equivalent  to 
the  dollar  promised ;  and  therefore  a  promise  to  pay  a  dollar  can  be  made 
a  legal  tender  as  well  as  the  dollar  promised,  but  they  do  not  decide  that  a 
piece  of  paper  that  has  no  promise  upon  it  to  pay  a  dollar  can  be  made  a 
legal  tender. 

The  evident  meaning  of  the  report  is  that  congress  should  have  no 
power  to  issue  such  a  piece  of  paper.  So  that  our  greenback  friends  bot 
tom  their  theories  of  fiat  paper  money  upon  a  decision  of  the  supreme  court, 
which,  if  it  means  anything,  means  that  congress  has  no  right  to  issue  such 
money.  We  see  in  many  of  their  papers  throughout  the  country  quota 
tions  from  Jefferson,  from  Calhoun,  and  others  in  support  of  their  theory. 


384  AN    AMERICAN    COMMONER. 

I  take  one  extract  from  a  speech  delivered  by  my  colleague  (Mr.  Hazel- 
tine)  in  the  House  May  6,  1882 ;  as  follows : 
Mr.  Calhoun  also  said : 

I  now  undertake  to  affirm,  and  without  the  least  fear  that  I  can  be 
answered,  that  the  paper  issued  by  government,  with  the  simple  promise  to 
receive  it  for  all  its  dues,  leaving  its  creditors  to  take  it  or  gold  or  silver  at 
their  option,  would,  to  the  extent  it  could  circulate,  form  a  perfect  paper 
circulation,  which  could  not  be  abused  by  the  government;  that  it  would 
be  as  uniform  in  value  as  the  metals  themselves,  and  I  shall  be  able  to 
prove  that  it  is  within  the  constitution  and  powers  of  congress  to  use  such 
a  paper  in  the  management  of  its  finance,  according  to  the  most  rigid  rule 
of  construing  the  constitution. 

The  extract  from  Jefferson  is  as  follows : 
Thomas  Jefferson,  in  his  letter  to  Mr.  Epps,  said : 

Bank  paper  must  be  suppressed,  and  the  circulating  medium  must 
be  restored  to  the  nation  to  whom  it  belongs.  It  is  the  only  fund  on  which 
they  can  rely  for  loans ;  it  is  the  only  resource  which  can  never  fail  them, 
and  it  is  an  abundant  one  for  every  necessary  purpose.  Treasury  bills, 
bottomed  on  taxes,  bearing  or  not  bearing  interest,  as  may  be  found  neces 
sary,  thrown  into  circulation  will  take  the  place  of  so  much  gold  or  silver, 
which  last,  when  crowded,  will  find  an  efflux  into  other  countries,  and  thus 
keep  the  quantum  of  medium  at  its  salutary  level. 

These  extracts  from  Jefferson  and  Calhoun  nowhere  state  that  treas 
ury  notes  can  be  made  a  legal  tender  for  private  debts ;  but  they  speak  only 
of  public  dues  and  taxes ;  money  issued  by  the  government  and  bottomed 
on  taxes,  that  is  made  receivable  for  all  government  taxes,  bearing  or  not 
bearing  interest,  could  be  thrown  into  circulation  as  money.  For,  as  Mr. 
Calhoun  said,  leaving  its  creditors  to  take  it  or  gold  or  silver  at  their  op 
tion  would,  to  the  extent  it  could  circulate,  form  a  perfect  paper  circula 
tion,  etc.  This  shows  that  they  meant  not  to  force  it  upon  private  creditors 
or  make  it  a  legal  tender  for  private  debts,  but  only  for  debts  due  the  gov 
ernment  and  from  the  government  to  others.  No  one  denies  the  proposi 
tion,  or  ever  has  denied  it.  In  fact,  it  is  one  that  the  democratic  party  has 
always  contended  for,  that  congress  has  a  right  to  issue  a  government  note 
payable  and  receivable  for  all  government  dues  not  otherwise  prohibited  by 
law;  it  has  done  so  in  time  past,  and  treasury  notes  thus  issued  will  cir 
culate  as  money.  But  they  have  always  been  issued  in  the  form  of  a 
promise  to  pay,  the  same  as  our  greenback. 

I  also  take  the  following  from  what  is  claimed  to  be  a  speech  of  Mr. 
Calhoun : 

Mr.  Calhoun,  of  South  Carolina^  said  in  the  Senate,  September  19, 
i837 : 


INTERIOR  OF  MR.  BLAND'S  OFFICE. 


I 


THE  OLD  SCHOOL  HOUSE.  YET    STANDING   ON    NO  CREEK,  NEAR 

HARFORD,  OHIO  COUNTY,  KENTUCKY,  WHERE 

MR.  BLAND  TAUGHT  SCHOOL. 


SPEECHES    FROM    iSjO    TO    1899.  385 

It  appears  to  me,  after  bestowing  the  best  reflection  I  can  give  the 
subject,  that  no  convertible  paper,  that  is,  no  paper  whose  credit  rests  upon 
a  promise  to  pay,  is  suitable  for  currency.  *  *  *  I  would  ask,  why 
should  the  government  mingle  its  credit  with  that  of  private  corporations  ? 
No  one  can  doubt  but  that  the  government  credit  is  better  than  that  of  any 
bank,  more  stable  and  more  safe.  Why,  then,  should  it  mix  it  up  with  the 
less  perfect  credit  of  those  institutions  ?  Why  not  use  its  own  credit  to  the 
amount  of  its  own  transactions  ? 

I  have  searched  the  records  of  the  Senate  of  September  19,  183?,  but  I 
find  that  Calhoun  made  no  such  speech  upon  the  subject  at  that  time,  nor 
am  I  able  to  find  any  such  language;  but  even  if  he  used  the  language,  it 
was  used  with  reference  to  notes  issued  by  the  national  banks  then  exist 
ing,  which  rested  simply  upon  their  convertibility  and  were  not  receivable 
for  taxes,  as  spoken  of  subsequently  by  Calhoun.  They  were  like  many  of 
our  state  bank  notes,  that  were  simply  private  promises  to  pay,  redeemable 
in  coin,  and  were  not  authorized  to  circulate  as  currency  in  payment  of 
taxes.  He  therefore  objected  to  that  form  of  money,  and  he  objected  to 
mingling  the  government  credit  with  that  of  private  corporations.  He  did 
not  speak  in  this  with  reference  to  treasury  notes  issued  directly  by  the 
government  and  made  receivable  for  taxes  and  redeemable  for  a  promise 
to  pay  on  the  part  of  the  government,  for  he  says  that  "No  one  can  doubt 
but  that  the  government  credit  is  better  than  that  of  any  bank,  more  stable 
and  more  safe.  Why,  then,  should  it  mix  up  with  the  less  perfect  credit  of 
those  institutions  ?  Why  not  use  its  own  credit  to  the  amount  of  its  own 
transactions  ?" 

And  that  is  the  democratic  doctrine  to-day  of  the  government  credit. 
Treasury  notes,  paper  money,  must  rest  upon  the  credit  of  the  government, 
and  as  opposed  to  national  banks,  he  favored  the  issue  of  treasury  notes 
redeemable  by  the  government  and  payable  for  all  government  dues  and 
debts,  and  receivable  in  like  manner  for  all  government  taxes. 


BIMETALLISM  AND  BONDED  DEBT. 

(Delivered  in  the  House  of  Representatives,  January  31,  1898,  in  Support  of  a  Reso 
lution  (Concurrent  Resolution  No.  22)  Declaring  all  bonds  of  the  United  States 
Payable  in  Gold  or  Silver  at  the  Government's  Option  and  that  to  Restore  the 
Coinage  of  Silver  is  not  in  Derogation  of  the  Rights  of  Public  Creditors.) 

MR.  SPEAKER  :     Ten  minutes  can  not  be  utilized  so  as  to  discuss  this 
question  as  it  ought  to  be,  nor  can  one  day  or  two  days,  if  allotted  to  this 
25 


386  AN    AMERICAN    COMMONER. 

House,  be  sufficient  for  that  purpose.  The  gold  standard  advocates  of 
this  country  have  driven  bimetallists  to  the  position  of  introducing  this 
resolution.  You  charged  that  we  undertook  to  disturb  the  public  credit — 
"playing  politics,"  in  the  language  of  the  gentleman  from  Maine  (Mr. 
Dingley) — when  your  side  of  the  House  and  your  administration  have 
called  forth  an  expression  of  the  representatives  of  the  people  upon  this 
subject.  You  are  violating  your  record  in  opposing  this  resolution.  You 
say  by  your  vote  to  table  this  resolution  that  this  government  shall  not  con 
tinue  the  coinage  of  silver,  either  the  free  coinage  or  limited  coinage  or  any 
other  kind ;  and  you  know  it. 

Every  man  who  does  that  practically  condemns  the  secretary  of  the 
treasury  for  coining  silver  in  the  last  eight  months,  as  he  has  coined  some 
$10,000,000  in  that  time. 

Your  president  announced  at  a  banquet  a  short  time  ago  that  all  the 
public  debts  must  be  paid  in  gold.  Your  secretary  of  the  treasury  made 
the  statement  before  the  committee  on  banking  and  currency  in  which  he 
said  your  party  must  be  committed  to  the  single  gold  standard  and  effectu 
ally  rivet  it  on  the  people  of  this  country ;  and  yet  when  we  meet  you  with 
a  proposition  of  bimetallism,  a  proposition  that  your  party  once  professed 
friendship  for — when  we  make  that  protest,  this  resolution,  the  gentleman 
from  Maine  says  it  is  "politics."  What  are  you  doing  by  your  politics  ? 

Now,  Mr.  Speaker,  what  is  this  resolution?  Simply  a  declaration 
that  by  the  law  which  authorized  the  issue  of  these  bonds  they  may  be  paid 
in  standard  silver  dollars  of  412  1-2  grains  of  silver  or  in  gold.  No  one  dis 
putes  but  that  is  the  law  to-day,  as  it  was  when  this  resolution  originally 
passed  the  Senate.  No  one  denies  the  fact  that  the  silver  dollar  is  a  full 
legal  tender  in  the  payment  of  all  debts,  public  and  private ;  yet  here  you 
are  to-day  by  your  votes  to  declare  that  every  silver  dollar  coined  of  the 
$460,000,000  is  not  to  be  used  to  pay  the  public  debt. 

You  are  to  declare  by  voting  down  this  resolution  that  no  coinage  that 
may  proceed  under  the  Sherman  act  shall  be  paid  on  the  public  debt,  not 
withstanding  the  law.  You  are  to  declare  all  other  creditors  of  the  govern 
ment,  the  great  mass  of  the  American  people,  are  to  receive  this  silver 
money,  but  by  some  arrangement,  I  know  not  what,  the  bondholders  are 
to  be  elevated  as  a  class  in  this  community  whose  rights  and  whose  inter 
ests  are  to  be  subserved,  notwithstanding  it  may  be  against  the  interest  of 
the  taxpayers,  the  people  of  this  country.  You  are  to  pay  the  bonds  in  gold. 

Where  are  you  to  get  the  gold  ?     Your  Chief  Executive  has  announced 


SPEECHES    FROM    1870    TO     1899.  387 

to  you  that  there  is  not  one  dollar  of  tax  in  all  this  country,  by  the  law  of 
the  land,  that  is  payable  specifically  in  gold,  and  the  only  way  you  have  to 
get  gold  when  it  is  needed  is  by  selling  bonds  for  that  purpose.  Now,  do 
you  propose  to  inaugurate  a  policy  in  this  country  by  which  one  bond  is  to 
be  liquidated  by  the  sale  of  another?  If  so,  when  are  you  to  extinguish 
the  public  debt  ?  How  long  before  the  people  of  this  country,  instead  of 
groaning  under  nearly  $1,000,000,000  of  interest  bearing  debt,  will  have 
it  amount  to  twice  that  sum?  That  is  your  policy  and  that  is  where  the 
republican  party  is  drifting — to  adopt  a  policy  that  means  that  all  the  bonds 
of  the  government  must  be  paid  in  gold,  whereas  you  have  no  way  of  pro 
curing  that  gold  except  by  still  further  bonding  the  people  of  this  country 
for  the  purpose. 

Mr.  Speaker,  if  I  had  the  time  I  would  like  to  show  where  from  the 
very  beginning  of  this  fight  for  restoration  of  silver  the  interest  of  the 
bondholder  has  been  held  up  against  the  interest  of  the  taxpayer.  In  all 
the  difficulties  we  have  had  upon  this  subject  the  bondholder  and  the  na 
tional  banker  alone  have  had  the  high  consideration  of  public  honor  and 
public  faith.  When  you  declare  it  is  contrary  to  public  honor  and  public 
faith  to  pay  these  bonds  with  silver  dollars,  you  stultify  yourselves;  you 
accuse  yourselves  of  dishonor  and  bad  faith  when  you  make  everybody 
else  take  it.  If  it  means  anything,  it  means  to  carry  out  your  idea  of  pub 
lic  honor  and  good  faith ,  that  you  are  to  relegate  silver  to  subsidiary  coin 
age  and  no  longer  recognize  it  as  standard  money  in  this  country. 

We  come  here  in  protest  against  all  this,  and  you  raise  the  false  and 
hypocritical  cry  that  we  are  trying  to  ruin  the  public  credit  and  the  people 
of  the  country.  Your  bonds  never  stood  better  than  while  we  had  450,- 
000,000  standard  silver  dollars  recognized  as  money  until  recently  by  every 
administration  except  those  of  Benjamin  Harrison,  Grover  Cleveland,  and 
William  McKinley.  When  you  have  all  of  that  money  now  in  circulation, 
are  you  to  strike  it  down  and  demonetize  it  by  voting  to  table  this  resolu 
tion? — for  that  is  what  it  means. 

No,  Mr.  Speaker ;  I  remember  in  the  Fifty-third  Congress,  the  con 
gress  when  this  same  question  practically  was  up  for  consideration,  when 
the  administration  of  Mr.  Cleveland  had  asked  congress  to  pass  a  bill  au 
thorizing  the  negotiation  of  a  loan  to  be  paid  in  gold,  the  distinguished 
gentleman  from  Illinois  (Mr.  Hopkins),  whom  I  now  see  in  his  seat,  led 
the  republican  party  in  opposition  to  it,  and  nearly  every  republican  from 
the  west  went  on  record  declaring  his  opposition  to  making  those  bonds 


^88  AN    AMERICAN    COMMONER. 

payable  specifically  in  gold. 

The  distinguished  gentleman  from  Ohio  (Mr.  Grosvenor)  declared 
that  that  was  a  move  of  the  Rothschilds ;  that  the  Rothschilds  were  willing 
to  pay  $16,000,000  in  order  to  have  the  American  government  change  its 
policy,  and  ridiculing  the  idea  that  we  could  not  maintain  bimetallism  in 
this  country.  I  have  not  the  time  to  read  the  Record.  Then  the  gentle 
man  from  Ohio  cited  his  own  platform  in  opposition  to  making  the  bonds 
payable  in  gold.  His  party  was  pledged  to  bimetallism — bimetallism,  that 
gold  and  silver  should  have  the  same  rights  of  coinage  in  the  mints.  There 
should  be  not  only  concurrent  circulation  but  a  concurrent  and  equal 
coinage  and  concurrent  and  equal  use  of  the  money  silver  in  the  payment  of 
debts. 

Nearly  the  whole  of  our  interest  bearing  debt  is  refunded  under  the 
act  of  July  14,  i87o,  which  made  bonds  payable  in  coin  of  the  standard 
weight  and  fineness  of  that  time.  Our  interest  bearing  debt  now  outstand 
ing  amounts  to  $847,365,130,  exclusive  of  the  Pacific  railroad  bonds.  A 
copy  of  these  bonds  will  show  under  what  authority  they  were  issued,  and 
that  holders  of  the  bonds  had  due  notice  of  the  terms  and  limitations  of 
the  law,  to  wit: 

THE  UNITED  STATES  OF  AMERICA 

Are  indebted  to ,  or  assigns,  in  the  sum  of  one  thousand  dollars. 

This  bond  is  issued  in  accordance  with  the  provisions  of  an  act  of  congress 
entitled  "An  act  to  authorize  the  refunding  of  the  national  debt,  approved 
July  14,  i87o,  amended  by  an  act  approved  January  20,  i87i,"  and  is  re 
deemable  at  the  pleasure  of  the  United  States  after  the  first  day  of  Septem 
ber,  A.  D.  1891,  in  coin  of  the  standard  value  of  the  United  States,  on  said 
July  14,  i87o,  with  interest  in  such  coin,  from  the  day  of  the  date  hereof, 
at  the  rate  of  four  and  a  half  per  centum  per  annum,  payable  quarterly  on 
the  first  day  of  December,  March,  June  and  September  in  each  year.  The 
principal  and  interest  are  exempt  from  the  payment  of  all  taxes  or  duties 
of  the  United  States,  as  well  as  from  taxation  in  any  form  by  or  under 
state,  municipal,  or  local  authority.  Transferable  on  the  books  of  this 
office. 

The  act  of  January  20,  i87i,  referred  to  as  amendatory  of  the  act  of 
i87o,  only  provided  for  a  larger  issue  of  bonds,  but  did  not  in  any  manner 
amend  or  change  the  law  of  i87o,  providing  for  the  payment  of  the  bonds 
in  coin  of  the  standard  value  of  July  14,  i87o.  At  the  date  of  the  passage 
of  the  act  authorizing  the  issue  of  these  bonds  the  mints  of  our  government 
were  open  to  the  free  coinage  of  silver  into  standard  silver  dollars  of 
412  1-2  grains.  These  silver  dollars  were  then,  and  had  been  since  1792, 


SPEECHES    FROM    iSjO    TO     1899.  389 

the  unit  of  account  or  value  in  this  country. 

Our  first  mint  act  established  the  silver  dollar  as  the  unit.  It  was  to 
consist  of  371  1-4  grains  pure  silver.  It  continued  the  unit  until  1873, 
when  the  silver  dollar  was  dropped  from  our  coinage  and  the  gold  dollar 
made  the  unit  of  account  or  value.  We  have  never  had  bonds  issued  pay 
able  in  gold  only.  We  have  always  recognized  that  this  government  was  a 
bimetallic  nation ;  consequently  our  obligations  called  for  coin,  not  for  gold 
specifically,  nor  for  silver  specifically.  The  contract  under  which  these 
bonds  were  issued,  as  shown  upon  the  face  of  the  bond  itself,  calls  for  the 
payment  of  the  bond,  principal  and  interest,  in  coin  of  the  standard  value 
of  i87o. 

Since  silver  was  the  unit  of  account  in  i87o,  it  could  be  more  consist 
ently  claimed  that  the  bonds  are  payable  specifically  in  silver  than  to  insist 
that  they  are  payable  only  in  gold.  The  fact  that  the  silver  dollar  was 
dropped  from  the  coinage  in  1873  did  not  change  the  contract  in  respect 
to  these  bonds.  So  soon  as  it  was  known  that  the  power  to  coin  silver  dol 
lars  had  been  withheld  by  an  act  of  congress,  efforts  were  immediately 
made  to  restore  these  dollars  to  the  coinage,  and  in  i878  the  coinage  of  the 
standard  silver  dollar  was  resumed  by  the  act  of  February  28,  i878.  The 
restored  silver  dollar  was  made  a  legal  tender  for  all  debts,  public  and  pri 
vate.  This  is  statutory  law  to-day. 

In  1 878  the  same  arguments  were  made  against  the  restoration  of  the 
silver  dollar  that  are  made  against  this  resolution.  It  was  contended  then 
that  it  would  not  be  equitable  or  just  to  compel  the  bondholder  to  receive 
the  standard  silver  dollars  in  payment  of  his  bonds.  Indeed,  the  fight  from 
ths»beginning  has  been  to  compel  the  bondholders  and  the  fund  holders  in 
general  to  live  up  to  their  contract  with  the  people.  The  bondholders 
seek  to  control  the  action  of  congress  upon  the  money  question,  but  the 
interests  of  the  bondholder,  or,  more  properly,  his  greed,  should  not  be 
permitted  to  interfere  with  the  constitutional  rights  of  congress  to  coin 
money  and  to  regulate  the  value  thereof. 

This  is  a  sovereign  power  conferred  upon  congress  by  the  constitu 
tion.  This  power  ought  not  to  be  controlled  or  limited  by  or  on  account 
of  the  interests  or  demands  of  any  one  particular  class.  Had  these  bonds 
been  made  payable  specifically  in  gold,  still  congress,  under  the  constitu 
tion,  would  have  ample  right  and  authority  to  restore  silver  to  legal  tender 
and  free  coinage.  In  compelling  the  bondholder  to  accept  it  notwithstand 
ing  his  contract  for  gold  Congress  would  violate  no  law  nor  would  it  be 


39° 


AN    AMERICAN    COMMONER. 


unjust.  It  would  violate  no  law,  because  congress  would  be  exercising  its 
constitutional  duty  in  coining  money  of  both  silver  and  gold.  It  would  not 
be  unjust,  because  under  the  free  coinage  system  the  silver  dollar  would  be 
of  equal  value  with  the  gold  dollar,  so  that,  notwithstanding  the  contract, 
had  it  been  made  payable  in  gold,  which  it  was  not,  congress  would  have 
the  rightful  power  under  the  constitution  to  restore  silver  to  free  coinage 
and  to  compel  all  creditors,  public  and  private  to  receive  it. 

If  under  the  system  of  free  coinage  of  silver  the  silver  dollar  should 
not  be  equal  in  value  to  the  gold  dollar,  the  contract  payable  in  gold  might 
present  a  case  of  equity.  Being  submitted  to  the  people  it  would  no  doubt 
receive  fair  consideration  and  treatment.  The  American  people  do  not 
wish  to  take  unfair  advantage  of  the  public  or  private  creditor ;  they  wish  to 
deal  fairly  with  all  classes.  They  believe  in  equal  rights  to  all  and  special 
privileges  to  none.  But  we  insist  that  no  unfounded  fears  and  false  proph 
ecies,  or  extortionate  greed  shall  be  lugged  into  this  discussion  simply  to 
control  the  action  of  congress  in  the  interests  of  the  creditor  class. 

Let  the  constitutional  power  of  congress  be  first  executed  by  the  open 
ing  of  the  mints  to  the  free  coinage  of  silver  as  well  as  gold.  After  this 
shall  have  been  accomplished  it  will  be  time  enough  to  discuss  the  ques 
tion  as  to  whether  anyone  has  been  injured,  and  if  so,  what  remedy  would 
be  necessary.  But  the  bondholders  of  the  government,  of  all  others,  would 
have  the  least  cause  to  complain,  because  the  government  holds  a  specific 
contract  with  them  to  pay  the  interest  bearing  debt  of  the  government  in 
either  gold  or  silver  of  the  standard  value  of  July  14,  i87o. 

As  before  stated,  the  president  of  the  United  States  at  a  banquet  given 
by  the  Manufacturers'  Club  of  New  York  a  few  weeks  ago  declared  that 
the  bonded  debt  of  the  government,  no  matter  what  the  contract  called  for, 
should  be  paid  in  gold,  or  the  best  money  in  the  world.  This  catch  phrase, 
"best  money  in  the  world,"  is  very  fashionable  nowadays  with  our  repub 
lican  friends.  They  have  abandoned  all  idea  that  silver  in  the  near  future 
is  to  become  the  best  money  in  the  world,  according  to  the  interpretation 
of  what  the  best  money  in  the  world  really  is. 

Their  argument  insists  upon  payment  in  the  money  that  the  world 
shall  establish  for  us  and  not  the  money  that  we  may  establish  for  our 
selves.  They  would  change  our  contracts  with  our  bondholders  so  as  to 
comply  with  the  demands  of  the  creditor.  They  advocate  the  policy  that 
we  must  permit  other  nations  to  dictate  our  monetary  system  and  the  man 
ner  in  which  we  shall  pay  our  debts.  Against  this  idea  the  democratic 


SPEECHES    FROM    iSjO    TO     1899.  39! 

party  protests.  We  are  patriotic  enough  to  believe  that  this  country  is 
quite  able  to  manage  its  own  financial  affairs  and  to  have  a  financial  system 
of  its  own  independent  of  other  countries. 

We  believe,  as  our  forefathers,  that  bimetallism  is  a  better  system 
than  monometallism.  We  know  that  our  country  was  constituted  bimet 
allic  and  that  it  so  existed  for  over  eighty  years.  The  constitution  en 
joins  upon  congress  the  duty  of  coining  money  and  prohibits  the  states 
making  anything  a  tender  in  the  payment  of  debts  but  silver  and  gold 
coin,  thus  establishing  for  the  states  of  the  Union  a  bimetallic  system  and 
conferring  upon  congress  the  power  to  coin  money  for  this  system. 

Congress  has  no  lawful  power  under  the  constitution  to  demonetize 
silver  or  to  refuse  silver  the  same  privileges  at  our  mints  that  it  gives  to 
gold.  The  bondholders  nor  any  other  class  should  be  permitted  to  thrust 
their  special  interests  into  the  discussion  to  influence  congress  in  disobey 
ing  a  constitutional  command.  As  before  said,  the  power  to  coin  money 
and  to  regulate  the  value  thereof  is  a  sovereign  power  conferred  by  the 
constitution  upon  the  congress.  One  congress  can  not  waive  or  limit  this 
power  so  as  to  bind  a  subsequent  congress.  No  congress  can  bind  its  suc 
cessors  so  as  to  prevent  succeeding  congresses  from  exercising  the  consti 
tutional  requirement  to  coin  silver  as  well  as  gold. 

It  was  exercised  for  over  eighty  years,  as  before  stated,  and  no  con 
tract,  public  or  private,  can  deprive  the  congress  of  the  United  States  of 
the  lawful  right  to  coin  silver  freely  as  a  full  legal  tender  for  this  country. 

The  resolution  under  consideration  is  as  follows : 

Resolved  by  the  Senate  (the  House  of  Representatives  concurring 
therein),  That  all  the  bonds  of  the  United  States  issued  or  authorized  to 
be  issued  under  the  said  acts  of  congress  hereinbefore  recited  are  payable, 
principal  and  interest,  at  the  option  of  the  government  of  the  United 
States,  in  silver  dollars  of  the  coinage  of  the  United  States  containing 
412  1-2  grains  each  of  standard  silver,  and  that  to  restore  to  its  coinage 
such  silver  coins  as  a  legal  tender  in  payment  of  said  bonds,  principal  and 
interest,  is  not  in  violation  of  the  public  faith  nor  in  derogation  of  the 
rights  of  the  public  creditor. 

These  resolutions  were  introduced  in  the  Senate  in  i878  by  Senator 
Stanley  Matthews,  of  Ohio,  during  the  presidency  of  Mr.  Hayes.  Senator 
Matthews  was  an  advocate  of  the  restoration  of  silver  to  free  coinage.  He 
was  a  distinguished  republican  senator.  He  was  afterwards  appointed  a 
justice  of  the  supreme  court  by  President  Hayes.  Stanley  Matthews  was 
a  prominent  republican.  His  ability  as  a  lawyer  can  not  be  questioned  by 
our  republican  friends.  The  resolutions  are  concurrent  resolutions  declar- 


392 


AN    AMERICAN    COMMONER. 


atory  of  the  sense  of  the  Senate  and  House. 

They  did  not  then  and  do  not  now  require  the  signature  of  the  presi 
dent,  consequently  the  only  effect  of  the  resolution  is  the  expression  of  the 
opinion  of  congress.  They  do  not  have  the  effect  of  a  statute.  The  reso 
lutions  are  historical  evidence  of  the  fact  that  at  the  time  they  were  first 
introduced  by  Stanley  Matthews  in  i878  the  bondholders  were  determined, 
if  possible,  to  defeat  the  free  coinage  of  silver.  These  resolutions  were 
passed  by  both  Houses  of  congress  in  i878,  before  the  passage  and  adop 
tion  of  what  is  now  known  as  the  Bland-Allison  act  that  restored  silver 
to  a  limited  coinage. 

From  that  day  to  this  the  interests  of  the  bondholders  and  national 
banks  have  been  held  up  as  a  scare  crow  to  deter  congress  from  the  restora 
tion  of  the  free  coinage  of  silver.  Our  republican  friends  at  this  time  ad 
mit  that  under  the  law  all  our  bonded  debts  and  other  government  obliga 
tions  are  payable  in  standard  silver  dollars.  Admitting  this,  they  pretend 
that  they  have  no  objection  to  the  first  part  of  the  resolutions,  which  de 
clares  the  law  to  be  that  all  public  debts  are  by  law  payable  in  standard 
silver  dollars.  They  now,  as  they  did  in  i878,  object  to  the  coinage  of 
these  dollars  for  the  purpose  of  paying  these  debts. 

While  admitting  the  lawful  right  to  pay  in  silver,  they  are  putting 
themselves  on  record  as  protesting  against  the  exercise  of  that  right  by 
coining  silver  dollars  so  as  to  enable  the  government  to  discharge  these 
bond  obligations  according  to  law.  "They  favor  the  war  but  are  opposed  to 
its  prosecution."  If  these  bonds  and  other  government  obligations  are  law 
fully  payable  in  silver  as  well  as  gold,  it  becomes  the  duty  of  congress  to 
coin  silver  as  well  as  gold  to  pay  our  debts.  It  is  the  duty  congress  owes 
to  the  taxpaying  people  of  this  country  who  are  burdened  with  this  debt. 
They  have  some  rights  in  this  controversy.  Their  interests  should  be  con 
sidered  as  paramount. 

They  ought  not  to  be  saddled  with  the  burden  of  paying  these  obli 
gations  under  the  single  gold  standard  when  they  have  a  specific  contract 
to  pay  under  the  bimetallic  standard.  At  the  time  of  the  passage  of  the  act 
refunding  the  public  debts  in  coin  bonds  the  taxpayers  had  the  right  to 
draw  on  two  sources  of  monetary  supply.  They  had  the  right  to  look  to 
the  gold  supply  and  also  to  the  silver  supply  for  the  money. 

The  opportunity  thus  to  draw  from  two  monetary  supplies  protected 
them  from  monetary  famine  and  from  monetary  monopoly.  The  cutting 
off  the  silver  supply  has  so  enhanced  the  value  of  gold  that  it  now  takes 


SPEECHES    FROM    l8jO    TO     1899.  393 

twice  the  amount  of  commodities  to  pay  a  debt  it  would  take  to  pay  in 
gold  or  silver  according  to  contract.  The  demonetization  of  silver  has 
about  doubled  the  value  or  purchasing  power  of  gold ;  hence  to  pay  debts, 
public  or  private,  under  the  gold  standard,  it  requires  twice  the  amount  of 
labor  and  the  products  of  labor  to  pay  a  dollar  as  would  be  required  under 
the  bimetallic  system. 

Our  interest  bearing  debt  has  been  reduced  from  about  two  thousand 
millions  down  to  less  than  nine  hundred  millions.  To  pay  this  nine  hun 
dred  millions  under  the  gold  standard  will  require  more  labor  and  the 
products  of  labor  than  would  have  been  required  to  pay  the  whole  two 
thousand  millions  under  the  bimetallic  system.  In  other  words,  while 
nominally  we  have  reduced  the  debt  more  than  one-half,  the  burden  of 
paying  what  remains,  if  paid  under  the  single  gold  standard,  would  be  as 
great  as  the  original  two  thousand  millions  would  be  under  the  bimetallic 
standard. 


EVILS  OF  USING  CORPORATION  NOTES  AS  MONEY. 

(From  a  Speech  in  the  House  of  Representatives,  May  13,  1882,  on   the  Bill  to   En 
able  National  Banks  to  Extend  their  Corporate  Existence.) 

MR.  SPEAKER  :  In  discussing  this  question  I  shall  undertake  to  an 
swer  some  of  the  points  made  by  the  gentleman  from  Massachusetts  (Mr. 
Crapo)  in  favor  of  the  national  banks.  One  of  the  arguments  last  made 
by  the  gentleman  from  Massachusetts  in  favor  of  the  national  banking 
system,  and  against  the  proposition  submitted  by  other  gentlemen  as  well 
as  myself  of  adopting  treasury  notes  for  bank  notes,  was  that  there  is  a 
danger  of  overissue  on  the  part  of  the  government  if  the  matter  of  issuing 
treasury  notes  is  confined  to  congress  alone,  and  that  it  is  better  to  transfer 
this  power  of  regulating  the  volume  of  paper  money  to  corporations,  to 
gentlemen  whose  interest  it  is  to  subserve  private  ends,  instead  of  holding 
that  power  in  the  representatives  of  the  people  for  the  public  benefit.  And 
he  eulogizes  further  the  national  banking  system  because,  he  says,  it  has 
furnished  the  government  and  the  people  with  a  paper  currency  secure  and 
valid  everywhere.  And  why  so?  What  is  a  national  bank  note  other 
than  a  treasury  note?  When  gentlemen  come  to  argue  this  question  I 


394 


AN    AMERICAN    COMMONER. 


want  them  to  answer  that  proposition.  What  is  a  national  bank  note  to 
day  other  than  state  paper?  Nothing.  It  is  not  redeemable  in  anything 
but  state  paper.  It  is  not  based  upon  coin,  but  upon  paper.  It  is  re 
deemable  in  a  treasury  note,  which  is  state  paper.  It  is  made  receivable 
and  payable  for  all  public  dues,  with  certain  exceptions,  and  is  therefore 
essentially  nothing  more  nor  less  than  state  paper  issued  by  the  govern 
ment,  and  handed  over  to  corporations  to  circulate  and  receive  the  profit 
of  the  issues. 

From  that  proposition  there  is  no  escape.  Under  this  system  is  there 
no  danger  of  banks  contracting  and  expanding  the  currency,  the  very 
danger  that  the  gentleman  warns  the  country  against  with  reference  to 
treasury  notes  ?  Is  there  no  danger  with  reference  to  bank  notes  in 
the  same  direction?  Why,  when  the  funding  bill  was  up  at  the  last  ses 
sion  of  congress  we  remember  that  the  national  banking  institutions,  in 
order  to  dragoon  congress  into  passing  such  measures  as  they  thought 
would  redound  to  their  benefit,  secured  the  veto  of  the  bill  by  bulldozing 
the  president  with  threats  of  contracting  the  currency  and  inviting  a 
financial  panic. 

Let  gentlemen  who  are  favoring  national  banks  here  to-day  re 
member  what  took  place  in  the  Forty-third  Congress.  That  congress 
assembled  in  the  midst  of  a  panic  greater  probably  than  this  country  ever 
experienced  before.  It  was  under  this  national  banking  system,  and  it 
was  determined  here  upon  the  part  of  those  favoring  the  national  banking 
system  that  instead  of  increasing  the  volume  of  legal  tender  notes  or 
treasury  notes  the  banking  law  should  be  extended  and  amended  so  as  to 
permit  banks  to  issue  the  money  without  limit.  Banking  was  made  free, 
and  other  measures  and  amendments  of  the  bank  law  in  their  interest  were 
made  at  that  congress.  And  to-day  the  same  proposition  is  here.  It  is 
contended  by  the  treasurer  that  the  banks  contract  and  expand  this  cur 
rency  in  their  own  interest  and  not  in  the  interest  of  the  people.  And  if 
congress  can  overissue  treasury  notes,  if  there  is  danger  of  congress  mak 
ing  these  overissues  without  the  intervention  and  the  coercion  of  banks, 
then  there  is  certainly  still  greater  danger  that  this  money  which  we  turn 
over  to  our  banking  corporations  for  their  benefit  and  use  may  be  con 
tracted  and  expanded  at  the  behest  of  these  corporations,  where  we  know 
they  demand  their  own  terms  as  to  our  legislation,  or,  failing  to  get  their 
demands,  paralyze  business  with  forebodings  of  financial  disasters. 

When  we  are  told  there  is  danger  of  centralization  also  in  the  proposi- 


SPEECHES    FROM     1870    TO     1899.  395 

tion  to  substitute  treasury  notes  for  bank  notes,  I  reply,  Mr.  Speaker,  that 
the  danger  of  centralization  and  revolution  in  this  government  comes  not 
from  the  people  or  their  representatives  here  untrammeled  by  corporations. 
The  danger  of  centralization,  the  danger  of  revolution,  the  danger  of 
changing  our  republican  form  of  government  to  that  of  an  aristocratic 
form  of  government,  arises  from  the  vast  power  of  the  corporations  that 
congress  has  built  up  in  this  country ;  among  the  greatest  and  most  power 
ful  and  most  to  be  feared  are  these  banks. 

Why,  sir,  the  danger  of  centralization  when  the  people's  representa 
tives  are  left  free  to  act  upon  public  subjects, — when  banking  corporations 
that  we  build  up  in  this  land  have  the  power  of  threatening  panic  by  bull 
dozing  congress,  by  saying  to  us  if  we  do  not  pass  this  bill  to-day  or  another 
bill  to-morrow  in  their  interest  the  country  will  go  to  ruin,  and  they  will 
bring  panics  and  financial  disaster  upon  us, — the  danger  of  centralization 
is  in  the  power  of  those  institutions,  and  not  in  the  power  of  congress  rep 
resenting  the  people  of  this  country. 

The  gentleman  from  Massachusetts  (Mr.  Crapo)  in  his  argument  for 
the  continuance  of  the  national  banks,  and  in  defense  of  the  national  bank 
system,  referred  to  the  great  benefits  rendered  by  the  banks  during  the 
war.  Suppose  we  admit  for  the  sake  of  argument  that  at  that  time  they 
worked  great  benefit.  But  there  were  other  patriots  in  the  land  besides 
those  engaged  in  national  banking ;  there  were  other  capitalists  who  should 
be  considered  as  well  as  these  bankers.  The  great  mass  of  the  producing 
people  of  the  country,  who  must  pay  all  the  expenses  of  these  corporations, 
should  be  considered  as  well  as  the  banks ;  for  the  people  were  as  patriotic 
as  were  the  banks. 

What  was  the  effect  of  banking  institutions  during  the  war,  and  what 
has  been  their  effect  since  in  demanding  legislation  on  the  part  of  congress  ? 
What  have  been  the  influences  brought  to  bear  by  the  banks  ?  During  the 
war  they  purchased  bonds  for  legal  tender  notes,  when  those  notes  were 
worth  but  sixty  cents  on  the  dollar  in  coin.  They  converted  into  bonds 
bearing  coin  interest  paper  worth  but  sixty  or  seventy  cents  on  the  dollar — 
bonds  to  full  amount  or  face  value  of  this  depreciated  paper. 

Had  the  government  gone  into  the  markets  of  the  world  and  offered 
its  bonds  to  be  sold  for  coin,  and  had  sold  them  for  sixty  or  seventy  cents 
on  the  dollar,  we  would  then  have  understood  the  transaction.  We  would 
have  seen  that  we  were  losing  thirty  or  forty  and,  in  some  instances,  proba 
bly  fifty  cents  on  the  dollar  in  that  transaction. 


396 


AN    AMERICAN    COMMONER. 


Yet  we  lost  the  same  amount  by  converting  these  paper  issues  into 
bonds;  paper  money  that  was  depreciated  on  account  of  the  issues  of  the 
national  banks  themselves.  The  legal  tender  notes  issued  during  the  war, 
had  there  been  no  other  issues,  had  bank  notes  not  been  issued,  might  have 
stood  near  par  all  the  time.  But  every  bank  note  that  was  issued  came  in 
competition  with  the  legal  tender  notes,  and  depreciated  them  to  that  ex 
tent.  These  banks  and  their  circulation  depreciated  the  paper  of  the  gov 
ernment  for  which  the  bonds  were  sold,  and  instead  of  being  a  benefit  to 
the  government  during  the  war  they  cost  it  not  less  than  $500,000,000. 

More  than  that.  When  they  had  secured  these  bonds  at  a  low  price 
and  had  control  of  them,  they  came  into  the  halls  of  congress  and  demanded 
that  bonds  thus  payable  in  paper  money  below  par  should  be  made  a  coin 
bond.  By  the  act  of  1869  congress  pledged  the  faith  of  this  nation  to  re 
deem  its  public  debt  in  coin.  This  is  a  specimen  of  the  influence  brought 
to  bear  by  the  national  banks  upon  the  legislation  of  this  country  in  the 
past.  Instead  of  being  a  public  benefit  these  banks  have  been  a  public 
curse;  instead  of  being  in  the  interest  of  the  people  they  have  been  the 
grandest  robbers  of  the  taxpayers  of  this  country  that  ever  existed  under 
any  government.  Yet  we  are  asked  now  to  continue  them.  Why?  Be 
cause  the  comptroller  of  the  currency  says  that  their  circulation  is  gradu 
ally  going  out,  and  that  this  objection  to  them  is  not  longer  to  be  urged. 
He  suggests  furthermore  that  we  should  not  consider  what  shall  be  sub 
stituted  for  these  national  banks  when  they  have  ceased  to  exist ;  that  some 
time  in  the  future  will  be  early  enough  to  consider  that  question.  But,  sir, 
we  are  paying  off  the  national  debt  at  the  rate  of  over  $100,000,000  a  year, 
and,  unless  we  cease  to  pay  off  this  debt,  unless  this  bill  means,  as  I  think  it 
does,  that  when  we  have  continued  and  rechartered  these  banks  the  next 
legislation  asked  on  the  part  of  congress  will  be  to  cease  the  payment  of 
the  public  debt  in  order  to  maintain  the  banks,  the  basis  on  which  the  na 
tional  bank  currency  has  rested  must  shortly  pass  away.  The  indefinite 
continuation  of  the  national  debt  is  what  the  comptroller  of  the  currency 
invites  us  to,  although  he  has  not  the  hardihood  to  say  so;  for  it  is  con 
fessed  here  that  the  banking  system  can  not  exist  much  longer  unless  we 
stop  immediately  the  rapid  payment  of  the  public  debt.  This  bill  }s  simply 
the  preliminary  and  forerunner  of  other  legislation  looking  to  the  perpetu 
ation  of  the  national  debt  in  order  to  perpetuate  the  national  banks.  Oth 
erwise  this  bill  means  nothing;  it  is  a  mere  brutum  fuhnen,  because  the 
banks  whose  charters  it  continues  and  the  very  system  it  seeks  to  uphold 


SPEECHES    FROM     1870    TO     1899.  397 

are  expiring — are  dying  from  day  to  day,  and  in  a  few  short  years  must 
go  out  of  existence. 

We  hear  it  proclaimed  throughout  the  country  to-day  that  a  national 
debt  is  a  national  blessing.  There  are  in  this  country,  and  have  been  since 
the  formation  of  our  government,  those  who  believe  that  the  nearer  we 
pattern  after  the  government  of  Great  Britain  the  nearer  are  we  to  per 
fection.  They  believe  in  aristocratic  government ;  a  government  controlled 
by  wealth  and  power  as  against  the  people;  a  government  in  which  the 
aristocratic  classes  shall  control  the  masses.  It  is  the  class  who  thus  be 
lieve,  who  proclaim,  that  a  national  debt  is  a  national  blessing.  Why? 
Because  in  accordance  with  the  English  system  we  can  bank  upon  a  per 
petual  debt.  It  is  this  species  of  legislation  which  in  a  few  short  years  has 
raised  up  in  this  country  millionaires  by  the  thousand,  when,  before  the 
war,  scarcely  one  was  heard  of.  The  great  contrast  between  extreme  pov 
erty  and  extreme  wealth  in  this  country  is  steadily  and  surely  marking  the 
line  between  the  aristocratic  and  the  laboring  classes  of  our  people 

No  man  goes  to  the  bank  counter  and  demands  the  redemption  of  a 
national  bank  bill.  Why?  Because  it  is  practically  government  paper, 
and  is  as  good  as  the  paper  in  which  it  would  be  redeemed.  The  pending 
bill  proposes  to  extend  the  charters  of  these  banks  for  twenty  years  and 
thus  give  them  for  the  term  of  forty  years  the  use  of  the  government  paper 
without  costing  them  a  dollar.  That  is  one  of  the  objects  of  the  pending 
bill.  It  proposes  to  extend  the  time  for  the  banks  to  redeem  their  circu 
lation,  and  they  know  it.  Yet  they  come  here  and  claim  that  they  are  act 
ing  for  the  benefit  of  the  people.  This  is  one  of  the  swindles  to  be  per 
petrated. 

If  they  are  compelled  to  redeem  their  circulation  at  once  in  lawful 
money  of  the  government,  and  if  this  money  be  deposited  in  the  treasury 
we  can  use  it  as  other  surplus  revenues  are  used,  in  redeeming  the  bonds 
upon  which  these  banks  are  doing  business ;  and  in  order  to  take  up  their 
circulation  we  can  issue  treasury  notes  having  the  same  monetary  func 
tions  as  the  bank  notes.  As  these  bank  notes  come  into  the  treasury  in 
the  payment  of  taxes  and  otherwise  the  bill  which  I  have  prepared  provides 
that  the  secretary  of  the  treasury  shall  issue  circulating  treasury  notes  to 
take  their  place 

Sir,  in  the  days  of  Benton,  in  1834,  when  this  same  subject  was  up, 
rechartering  the  national  bank,  the  national  banks  were  very  much  op 
posed  to  his  proposition  to  so  amend  the  coinage  laws  as  to  induce  gold  as 


398  AN    AMERICAN    COMMONER. 

well  as  silver  to  flow  to  this  country  to  take  the  place  of  bank  notes.  They 
denounced  gold  then  as  they  do  silver  now.  They  ridiculed  gold  and  ridi 
culed  Benton.  And  because  we  to-day  seek  to  bring  silver  back  to  where 
it  was  before  its  demonetization,  because  we  desire  coin  in  this  government 
that  is  contemplated  in  the  constitution,  these  same  institutions  that  de 
nounced  gold  in  Benton's  days  are  denouncing  silver  now,  and  denouncing 
those  who  favor  it  as  silver  humbugs  as  they  called  him  a  gold  humbug. 
This  proposition  is  intended  to  accommodate  them.  They  would  demone 
tize  gold  to-day  if  it  was  necessary  to  do  so  in  order  that  their  paper  should 
circulate.  For  the  purpose  of  supplying  the  vacuum  that  would  be  occa 
sioned  by  withdrawing  the  coinage  of  silver  and  silver  certificates — for  the 
purpose  of  supplying  that  vacuum  with  bank  paper  they  ask  this  congress 
to  stop  the  coinage  of  silver  and  the  issue  of  silver  certificates.  And  that 
is  the  sort  of  legislation  that  we  are  asked  from  year  to  year  to  enact  in  or 
der  to  accommodate  national  banks. 

Mr.  Speaker,  while  upon  this  silver  question,  I  desire  to  submit  a  few 
reflections  in  reference  to  it.  In  the  first  place,  a  few  days  ago  congress 
abandoned  its  duty  in  reference  to  the  tariff  and  turned  that  over  to  a  com 
mission.  We  are  asked  now  to  abandon  our  duty  in  reference  to  the  state 
paper  of  the  government  and  turn  that  over  to  a  banking  commission. 
We  have  been  asked  heretofore  with  reference  to  silver  to  stop  coinage 
and  turn  that  over  to  another  commission  to  meet  with  foreign  govern 
ments  and  ask  their  aid.  When  we  talk  of  bills  regulating  railroad  corpora 
tions  there  must  be  a  commission  for  that  also.  When  it  is  sought  to  perpet 
uate  these  enormities  and  iniquities  and  to  increase  the  power  of  these  vast 
corporations  that  have  grown  up  here,  they  are  afraid  to  trust  the  repre 
sentatives  of  the  people  and  ask  to  turn  over  everything  to  commissions  to 
be  controlled  by  them.  No,  Mr.  Speaker ;  we  want  no  commission  to  meet 
with  foreign  governments  on  this  silver  question.  It  is  simply  cowardice 
to  talk  of  sending  agents  to  foreign  governments  to  ask  them  to  restore 
silver  to  circulation  as  money.  As  the  gentleman  from  Texas  (Mr.  Rea 
gan)  just  now  remarks  to  me,  it  is  worse  than  that;  it  is  corruption.  And 
why?  You  take  Great  Britain,  France,  and  other  European  countries, 
and  their  production  of  silver  is  simply  nothing.  You  take  the  American 
continent,  and  here  is  the  production  of  that  metal.  In  the  United  States 
one-half  of  the  annual  supply  of  the  silver  of  the  world  is  produced.  There 
were  in  the  year  1879  about  eighty  millions  of  dollars'  worth  of  silver  pro 
duced  in  the  civilized  world,  and  forty  millions  of  that  were  produced  in 


SPEECHES  FROM  1870  TO  1899.  399 

our  country.  That  being  our  product,  we  ought  to  protect  it,  because  the 
constitution  requires  us  to  do  so,  by  making  money  of  it.  We  produce 
one-half  of  the  silver  produced  in  the  civilized  world  to-day,  and  yet  we 
are  too  cowardly  to  take  hold  of  our  own  product  and  establish  its  value 
in  the  market.  We  must  go  to  nations  who  produce  nothing  of  it ;  we  must 
ask  their  cooperation  to  rehabilitate  it ! 

Why,  Mr.  Speaker,  all  this  is  the  demand  of  the  national  banks.  It 
does  not  come  from  the  great  mass  of  people  of  this  country.  Not  at  all. 
When  the  Senate  struck  from  the  bill  we  passed  in  the  House  the  unlimited 
coinage  feature  of  the  silver  bill  it  infracted  every  principle  of  monetary 
science.  It  was  that  act  that  depreciated  silver.  And  why?  Because 
it  laid  an  embargo  upon  it.  It  said  to  gold,  "You  can  come  into  the  mints 
and  the  treasury,  and  go  free  in  and  out  every  door;  you  are  here  recog 
nized;  you  are  here  honored."  But  it  said  to  silver,  "You  can  come  to  the 
mints  in  limited  quantities  only ;  and  if  you  come  in  greater  quantities  than 
that  we  will  barricade  the  doors  and  shut  you  out ;  we  will  go  into  the  mar 
ket  to  depreciate  you  and  purchase  you  at  cheap  rates."  And  worse  than 
that,  it  violated  the  very  theory  of  metallic  money. 

What  is  the  idea  of  metallic  money?  The  theory  upon  which  metallic 
money  is  based  is  simply  this :  That  gold  and  silver  being  produced  in  lim 
ited  quantities,  by  consent  of  mankind  have  become  money,  and  that  if 
both  are  taken  to  the  mint  and  given  unlimited  coinage — you  may  charge 
something  for  the  coinage ;  that  is  not  the  question ;  but  it  shall  be  coined 
unlimitedly — and  thus  nature  supplies  the  demand  for  money.  That  is  to 
say,  all  the  jurisdiction  congress  has  over  the  coining  of  gold  and  silver 
is  to  declare  the  relation  existing  between  the  two  as  to  value,  to  declare 
what  shall  constitute  a  dollar  in  silver  and  a  dollar  in  gold,  and  open  the 
mint  to  both.  When  it  has  done  that  its  functions  cease.  I  do  not  pretend 
to  say  that  it  is  even  necessary  to  declare  it  to  be  legal  tender,  for  I  believe 
it  to  be  so  under  the  constitution.  Usually  we  authorize  its  circulation, 
we  declare  it  to  be  a  legal  tender,  and  there  we  stop.  Nature,  through 
the  labor  of  mankind,  in  his  industries  in  opening  mines,  in  carrying  on 
trade,  supplies  the  volume  of  money  more  regularly  than  does  the  legisla 
tion  of  congress  when  applied  to  the  regulation  of  paper  money. 

Nature  will  supply  these  metals  to  this  nation  and  to  all  nations  alike ; 
and  hence  the  volume  of  money  will  be  steady ;  it  will  not  be  contracted  to 
day  and  expanded  to-morrow  for  the  purpose  of  enriching  a  few  at  the  ex 
pense  of  the  great  mass  of  the  people.  It  will  come  in  in  a  steady  volume, 


400 


AN    AMERICAN    COMMONER. 


so  to  speak.  You  will  have  all  the  stock  which  has  been  dug  from  the 
mines  for  centuries  back,  and  all  the  products  of  the  future  to  draw  from, 
which  has  been  relied  upon  and  upon  which  contracts  have  been  based 
heretofore.  Hence  it  becomes  a  national  and  international  money,  and  is 
supplied  to  all  peoples  alike. 

When  you  do  away  with  that  argument,  you  knock  from  under  it  the 
foundation  upon  which  it  rests.  And  when  congress  undertakes  to  say 
that  it  will  regulate  the  volume  of  metallic  money  by  demonetizing  gold  or 
demonetizing  silver,  or  by  limiting  the  coinage,  it  infringes  every  prin 
ciple  of  metallic  money  and  does  violence  to  all  true  monetary  theories.  You 
may  as  well  go  upon  a  paper  basis  and  do  away  with  the  monetary  metals 
entirely. 

When  you  throw  open  the  mints  to  gold  and  silver  of  the  world  then 
you  will  have  a  parity  between  the  metals  in  this  country  and  in  all  coun 
tries.  We  are  able  to  maintain  it  ourselves  without  the  aid  of  foreign  gov 
ernments.  They  are  not  able  further  to  demonetize  silver.  On  the  con 
trary,  the  last  monetary  conference  showed  that  they  had  gone  as  far  in 
that  direction  as  it  was  possible  for  them  to  go,  and  a  little  further  than  it 
was  safe  to  go. 

I  say,  then,  that  this  nation,  with  its  vast  extent  of  territory,  reaching 
as  it  does  from  the  Atlantic  to  the  Pacific  and  from  the  lakes  to  the  Gulf, 
with  its  fifty  millions  of  busy  people  handling  and  transacting  all  kinds  of 
business,  with  a  population  increasing  by  immigration  at  the  rate  of  a  half 
a  million  annually,  this  great  nation  is  able  to  utilize  our  own  product  of 
the  precious  metals  without  asking  the  permission  of  foreign  governments. 

Hence  I  denounce  as  a  crime  the  attempted  demonetization  of  silver 
or  its  limited  coinage  as  embraced  in  that  bill.  I  denounce  it  as  a  swindle; 
I  denounce  it  here  upon  this  floor  as  being  in  the  interest  of  the  banks  and 
other  corporations  in  this  country  and  against  the  interests  of  the  people; 
I  denounce  it  as  a  species  of  robbery  which  ought  to  be  kicked  out  of  this 
legislative  hall ;  and  I  hope  it  will  be,  and  the  authors  left  at  home  the  next 
election. 

I  mean  no  disrespect  to  the  gentlemen  of  the  committee  who  have 
reported  the  bill.  I  may  have  said  a  little  too  much  in  making  that  state 
ment;  but  I  will  admonish  them  of  one  thing;  they  must  answer  for  this 
before  the  people  of  the  country. 

If  silver  and  gold  had  been  in  circulation  in  i8?3 ;  if  we  had  then  been 
on  a  coin  basis  as  we  are  now,  and  the  proposition  had  then  been  made  to 


SPEECHES    FROM    1870    TO    1899.  40! 

demonetize  one  or  the  other  of  these  metals,  the  people  would  have  under 
stood  what  it  meant,  and  the  proposition  would  have  been  denounced  from 
one  end  of  the  Union  to  the  other.  It  never  could  have  been  accomplished. 

And  now  that  the  people  of  the  country  have  silver  in  circulation, 
although  in  limited  quantities,  you  never  can  take  it  from  them  until  the  na 
tional  banks  shall  step  into  the  hall  of  this  house  and  into  the  other  end  of 
the  capitol,  and,  by  threatening  panics  and  otherwise,  induce  the  repre 
sentatives  of  the  people  to  obey  their  behests  and  their  will 

From  the  beginning  of  this  government  there  have  been  two  opposing 
theories,  one  represented  by  Hamilton,  the  other  by  Jefferson.  Hamilton 
represented  the  idea  of  an  aristocratic  government;  he  advocated  national 
banks  Jefferson  represented  a  republican  form  of  government ;  he  did  not 
favor  national  banks.  The  democratic  party  in  all  its  history  never 
established  a  national  bank,  while  it  has  always  been  in  favor  of  the  free, 
unlimited  coinage  of  gold  and  silver.  The  democratic  party  never  op 
pressed  the  people  of  this  land  by  legislation  for  the  creation  or  extension 
of  banking  corporations.  It  has  never  built  up  institutions  of  this  sort, 
but  has  always  done  what  it  could  to  put  them  down.  In  the  days  of  Ben- 
ton  this  war  was  waged;  and  now  to-day,  nearly  one  hundred  years  from 
the  formation  of  the  government,  we  meet  the  same  issues  and  the  same 
doctrines  that  prevailed  and  divided  parties  at  that  time. 

We  are  called  upon  to-day  to  defend  on  this  floor  the  doctrine  that  ours 
is  a  government  of  limited  powers,  against  centralization  of  power  in  the 
Federal  government.  Wealthy  corporations  seek  to  centralize  power  for 
their  own  aggrandizement.  This  idea  of  centralization  is  dangerous  to 
the  interests  of  the  masses  of  the  people.  Centralization  may  protect 
wealth,  but  it  destroys  liberty.  Following  Jefferson  and  the  teachings 
of  the  democratic  party,  I  am  opposed  to  building  up  corporations  in  this 
country  upon  theories  of  centralized  government 


THE  DEBT  PAYING  POWER  OF  WESTERN  PRODUCTS. 

(An  Address  to  the  Senate  Committee  on  Finance,  Delivered  in  1897,   to  a  Delega 
tion  of  New  York  Bankers.) 

I  did  not  come  here  with  the  expectation  of  making  any  remarks  what 
ever  ;  I  came  as  a  listener ;  but  as  a  matter  of  course,  when  the  gentleman 
26 


402 


AN    AMERICAN    COMMONER. 


was  figuring  there  awhile  ago,  I  took  this  position — and  I  think  it  a  tenable 
one — that,  admitting,  as  he  did  in  his  figures,  that  our  debt  abroad  and  at 
home,  under  the  law  is  payable  in  silver,  and  that  a  bushel  of  wheat  is  worth 
a  dollar  and  eight  cents  in  silver  and  a  dollar  in  gold — that  the  farmer  in 
the  west,  who  pays  his  eastern  debt  in  wheat,  will  gain  eight  cents  over 
that  measured  in  gold.  His  debt  was  contracted  when  you  had  an  inflated 
currency ;  he  never  borrowed  of  you  one  solitary  cent  of  gold,  nor  even  of 
silver,  but  what  you  call  a  depreciated  currency — a  fraud — when  it  was 
inflated ;  and  to-day  the  farmer  of  the  west  who  with  a  hundred  bushels  of 
wheat  five  or  six  years  ago,  in  your  inflated  currency,  could  pay  $200  of 
that  debt,  to-day  can  pay  but  $75.  That  is  what  he  complains  of.  It  is 
a  plain  proposition.  His  debt  stands  him  so  many  dollars.  His  debt 
never  comes  down  from  that.  It  is  measured  in  units,  in  dollars,  in  mort 
gages  calling  for  dollars.  He  got  greenback  dollars  when  they  were  far 
below  gold.  You  now  undertake  to  make  him  pay  you  in  gold  by  con 
tracting  and  doing  away  with  the  money  that  he  borrowed  of  you,  and 
you  claim  now  that  you  are  not  satisfied  even  with  silver  that  has  been  the 
money  of  this  country  ever  since  this  was  a  government ;  a  money  that  is 
incorporated  in  your  constitution  by  your  fathers  as  the  coin  of  your 
country,  and  was  so  until  the  act  of  1873  tnat  dropped  it  from  the  coins; 
the  money  of  the  constitution,  the  money  denominated  in  your  bonds 
which  provide  that  it  was  to  be  payable  in  coin  at  its  present  weight  and 
fineness — that  is  to  say,  the  silver  dollar  of  412.5  grains.  Then,  if  you 
recollect,  it  is  the  producers  of  this  country  who  pay  all  your  debts;  you 
gentlemen  in  Wall  street  do  not  pay  one  dollar  of  it;  it  is  the  great  pro 
ducing  element  of  this  country  that  pays  you  and  pays  these  debts ;  debts, 
I  say,  that  were  contracted  in  paper,  and  now  you  want  to  compel  them, 
by  doing  away  with  that  paper,  withdrawing  it,  contracting  the  currency, 
reducing  the  value  of  the  commodities  in  which  you  are  to  be  paid ;  that 
is  the  complaint  they  make,  and  it  does  seem  to  me  it  is  a  very  just  one. 
If  I  was  in  debt  five  years  ago  $100 — my  labor — the  wages  were  worth 
$i  a  day,  $100  paid  that  debt.  To-day,  after  the  reduction  of  the  volume 
of  the  circulating  medium,  you  have  reduced  prices  so  that  this  labor  is 
worth  only  fifty  cents,  and  instead  of  buying  in  $100  it  takes  $200;  that  is 
plain.  These  are  plain  propositions  that  the  people  want  to  understand, 
and  they  can  not  be  satisfied  by  any  such  propositions  as  that  you  can  bor 
row  a  little  money  a  little  cheaper  somewhere  when  you  have  a  gold  stand 
ard  than  when  commodities  are  measured  by  gold  and  silver.  These 


SPEECHES  FROM  iSyO  TO  1899.  403 

commodities  will  pay  so  much  more  than  when  measured  in  gold  alone; 
and,  having  contracted  debts  on  a  paper  basis  or  inflated  prices,  you  now 
ask  them  to  pay  you  on  contracted  prices.  You  take  two  bushels  of 
wheat,  whereas  you  give  them  but  one,  and  I  want  to  say  now,  with  all 
due  deference  here,  you  had  better  accept  the  proposition — if  I  know  the 
people  that  I  represent,  and  I  think  I  do,  throughout  all  the  west  and  south ! 
And  we  had  a  little  experiment  of  it  last  summer,  when  there  was  an  upris 
ing  of  it  throughout  the  Union,  and  promises  were  made  that  this  financial 
matter  would  be  attended  to,  that  these  people  would  have  some  relief; 
and  these  men  went  home  and  are  looking  to  congress  to-day.  But  I  tell 
you  if  you  "put  on  the  screws"  much  further,  and  reduce  these  people  yet 
further  to  the  necessities,  when  the  uprising  comes  again  there  is  no  power 
in  this  government  to  put  it  down;  and  instead  of  the  interest  of  your 
bonds  being  paid  in  gold,  they  will  be  wiped  out  as  with  a  sponge ;  and  I 
stand  here  as  a  conservative  man  when  I  say  so.  I  am  willing  to  pay  it 
as  demanded  in  the  bond,  and  for  what  the  contract  calls,  but  unless  this 
measure  is  adopted  you  will  see  men  in  the  next  congress  that  will  place 
you  back  where  you  were  in  1869,  making  your  debt  payable  in  paper.  I 
speak  to  you  as  a  friend  and  not  as  an  enemy,  as  a  friend  to  my  country, 
and  I  urge  you  now  sincerely  and  honestly  to  take  that  warning. 


MASONRY  AND  ITS  SECRET  CHARITIES. 

(From  an  Address  on  Masonry  Delivered  at  Lebanon,  Mo.,  June  24,  1870.) 

The  manner  of  Masonry  is  secrecy — silence!  It  works  love  and 
charity.  Times  of  broils  and  battles,  blood  and  carnage,  that  "try  men's 
souls,"  causing  widows  to  mourn,  and  orphans  to  hunger,  are  specially 
the  occasion  for  this  secret  work  of  charity.  When  fathers  and 
sons  mistrust  each  other,  when  confidence  flees  from  men,  when  rapine 
and  murder  infest  the  land,  Masonry,  with  its  unseen  but  trusty  hand 
dries  the  widow's  tears,  feeds  the  orphan,  soothes  and  heals  the  sick  and 
wounded,  and  buries  the  dead. 

To  those  who  wish  to  become  Masons  for  these  noble  purposes,  the 
portals  are  open.  No  others  should  seek  to  enter  within  those  sacred  veils 


404  AN    AMERICAN    COMMONER. 

"where  incense  burns  upon  the  holy  altars  day  and  night." 

When  we  view  Masonry  in  this  light  we  agree  that  it  should  be  per 
petuated.  In  this  manner  it  has  been  and  it  will  be  perpetuated.  Na 
tions,  age  after  age,  and  one  after  another,  have  sprung  into  existence  to 
awe  and  dazzle  the  world  with  their  deeds  of  valor — their  learning,  their 
poetry,  eloquence,  science  and  art;  cities,  with  their  lofty  towers  and 
spires  piercing  the  heavens,  have  grown  up  like  magic.  And  in  all  this, 
operative  Masonry  played  an  important  part. 

But  dissensions,  wars  and  pestilence  have  swept  away  the  people  while 
time  has  toppled  into  decay  their  cities  and  towns.  Fertile  plains  become 
a  desert  waste.  Mountains,  where  the  shepherd  in  the  soft  moonlight  of 
a  summer's  eve,  watched  with  peaceful  heart  and  pastoral  care  over  his 
sleeping  flocks,  and  offered  up  his  sacrifices  to  the  one  true  and  living  God, 
have  been  shaken  by  earthquakes  and  leveled  to  the  lowest  plain.  Noth 
ing  earthly  remains  of  the  warrior,  the  poet,  the  builder,  save  the  solitary 
monument  that  marks  his  dust 

Nations  of  people  perish  and  are  forgotten.  Masonry  is  preserved 
and  transmitted  from  father  to  son,  from  generation  to  generation,  as  a 
rich  legacy,  a  precious  heritage. 

"We  have  seen  the  lightning  write  its  fiery  path  upon  the  dark  cloud 
and  expire.  So  the  genius  of  man  amid  the  shades  of  mortality,  glitters  a 
moment  through  the  gloom,  and  vanishes  from  our  sight  forever." 

The  cloud,  unlocked  by  the  thunderbolt,  opens  its  gates,  pours  out  its 
torrents,  and  floods  the  earth  with  its  destructive  elements,  sweeping  along 
the  forests,  plowing  and  twisting  from  their  aged  roots  the  tallest  oaks. 
Yet  the  cloud  spends  its  force  and  melts  away  into  the  air.  The  thunder's 
roar  dies  away  in  soft  echoes  among  the  distant  hills.  The  flood  foams 
and  frets  and  rushes  headlong  into  the  eternal  sea.  Thus  rushes  away 
into  eternity  nation  after  nation,  age  upon  age,  generation  after  genera 
tion.  All  are  elements  of  time,  but  the  principles  of  Masonry  are  a  part 
of  true  Divinity.  It  is  that  part  of  the  eternal  in  man  which  will  survive 
the  flight  of  time  the  wreck  of  matter  to  receive  a  reward  in  eternity  that 
Time  denies  and  can  not  give. 


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